When I first met Blong Yang a little more than a year ago, he was a huge underdog to DFL-endorsed Linda Higgins for an open Hennepin County Commissioner race.
Few people knew about the former investigator for the Department of Human Rights, and he was literally running on a song and a prayer.
One of the reasons I found Yang was because his campaign theme song, "All This and More," had become a bit of an Internet sensation. A blogger for Comedy Central had compared it to something that might have been written by the Black Eyed Peas. In fact, it had been done by two local fans, Chael Young and PK Yang.
Yang lost to Higgins but did far better than anyone anticipated, pulling more than 40 percent of the vote. That gave him a lot of confidence, and soon people were urging him to run for the Minneapolis City Council seat vacated by Don Samuels.
On Nov. 5, Yang won on just the second ballot and joined a slate of other new council members who aim to change the look and feel of city government. The story line being touted is that voters and the DFL Party promoted a group of new, aspirational leaders whose race better mirrors the changing city.
"That's the narrative, but I'm not sure that's true [with me]," said Yang, 37.
We were sitting over coffee at Lowry Cafe in his north Minneapolis ward. He pushed a news release from the DFL across the table. It claimed the party "helped elect the first Somali, the first Hmong and the first Latina."
Yang smiled.