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By
Tim Rogers
trogers@ticotimes.net
Tico
Times Staff
BOSTON,
Massachusetts – Costa Rican astronaut
Franklin Chang may have been the
first Latino to travel into outer space, but here
on Earth, his daughter, Sonia Chang- Díaz,
has a career that’s skyrocketing in its own
right.
A
relative newcomer to politics, Chang-Díaz,
30, was elected Tuesday to a state senate seat
in the U.S. state of Massachusetts after her
opponent, incumbent state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson,
dropped out of the race following her
arrest last week on federal bribery charges. But
for Chang-Díaz, who campaigned in English
and Spanish throughout the state’s ethnically
diverse Second Suffolk District in Boston,
even an unopposed victory is still a victory.
Chang-Díaz,
a Democrat, narrowly lost her
first bid to defeat Wilkerson in the 2006 Massachusetts
state senate elections, but this time
around she received some powerful endorsements
from environmentalists, state health-workers’
unions and Boston’s leading newspapers,
including The Boston Globe. “I
was very honored to have earned those
endorsements, especially because we weren’t
counting on endorsements,” she told
The Tico Times in a phone interview this
week from her home in Boston. “But in the
end, there’s only one endorsement that matters.
That’s the voters.”
Chang-Díaz,
a former school teacher who
was born in Boston but spent much of
her youth visiting Costa Rica, is the first Latina
to be elected to the Massachusetts State
Senate. She said she will focus on improving
public education, working toward
affordable, universal health care, citizen
security, job creation and protecting the
environment, among other issues. Though
she identifies mostly as a U.S. citizen,
she says her Costa Rican roots and value
system “inform my experience and conscientiousness”
as a community figure. She
says her father, who splits time between
Houston and Costa Rica, has always been
a big example for her, and traveled up to
Boston to support her through a tough primary
several months ago.
“We
were always e-mailing and Skypeing throughout
the entire electoral process,” the
affable senator-elect said. “Dad
has always been a big booster of me
running for office. He and my mom stressed
(the importance of) giving back to the
community and helping the community. He
did it through science and my mom as
a social worker.”
Asked
if she’d ever consider returning to
Costa Rica for a career in politics there, Chang-Díaz
said that would be “a pretty big
leap,” and for now she’s just glad to have made
it through this election. However,
she doesn’t rule out the possibility of
another Chang eying public office in
Costa Rica someday. “I’ll
leave that speculation to my dad, who
is more qualified,” she said with a laugh.
“Although he’s going to kill me for putting
him in the spotlight.”
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