US congress

SAM Meas, the first Cambodian-American to run for state or federal office in United States history, has failed in his bid to secure the Republican Party nomination for the house of representatives in Massachusetts’ Fifth District.

The Boston Herald reported on Tuesday that Meas was defeated by John Golnik, a former currency trader and reseller of Boston College merchandise. Meas, an investment analyst from Haverhill, Massachusetts, came to the US in 1986 and graduated from Virginia Tech University in 1996. He and a cousin left Cambodia for a Thai refugee camp in 1983.

Meas’s time in Cambodia “shaped my own understanding of freedom and liberty”, he says on his website.