Allahu Akbar!!!:
SAUDI-BORN CANDIDATE SETS SIGHTS ON FIRSTS
Daryl Kelley, Los Angeles Times, 3/5/04
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-arab8mar08,1,7123786.story
Ferial Amin Masry pulled off a rare double in last week's election,
qualifying as a Democratic write-in candidate in the 37th Assembly District
for the fall general election while winning a seat outright on the Ventura
County Democratic Central Committee.
But if Masry's feat was unprecedented locally, it pales beside what the
Thousand Oaks woman hopes to accomplish in November.
If elected, the 55-year-old U.S. government teacher would become the
nation's first Saudi American to hold elective office in the U.S.,
according to the Arab American Institute in Washington. She'd become
California's first Arab American woman to serve in the Legislature, and one
of only a few in the nation to be elected as a state lawmaker.
As she pursues her long-shot candidacy in a heavily Republican district,
Masry is equally occupied with thoughts of her oldest child, who has
undertaken his own uphill climb: Mohammed Omar Masry, 24, is a U.S. Army
sergeant in Baghdad, helping to rebuild Iraqi schools while explaining
America's role in dispatches on Islam Online, the Middle Eastern equivalent
of America Online.
Omar Masry said his mother's campaign should break stereotypes...
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