While riding her bicycle in Flushing on July 15, Assembly Member Ellen Young (D-Queens) was seriously injured after being hit by a taxi. She was briefly knocked unconscious and sustained severe cuts and bruises all over her body, though nothing too serious. The hospital released her after six hours.

While she recovers, Young must prepare for another potentially bruising affair: a Democratic primary re-match against Grace Meng, who is looking to make the race between the two Chinese-American women a referendum on the future of the community.

Meng, an attorney, is the daughter of Young’s predecessor, former Assembly Member Jimmy Meng (D-Queens), the first Asian-American in the State Legislature. She is hoping to unseat Young as the representative of Flushing, the city’s largest Asian-American community.

But if Young is daunted by the race, with its mix of generational and ethnic politics, she is not showing it—though she declined an interview on the race.

“She hasn’t been focusing on campaigning,” said Joe Reubens, a political director at the Parkside Group and a spokesperson for Young. “She’s been up in Albany fighting for the people she represents.”

This will be round two in the Young/Meng face-off. They first ran against each in 2006 to fill the seat left vacant by Jimmy Meng, who retired after serving just one term. Meng cited health concerns as his reason for not running for re-election, although some speculate an investigation into voting irregularities surrounding his narrow win in 2004 might have been the cause. No charges were ever filed against Meng.

Legal troubles were the cause of his daughter’s withdrawal from the race to succeed him, after Young successfully challenged her residency in the district.

Reubens said the memory of Meng’s last defeat will still ring in the minds of many voters.

“She doesn’t have long-term ties to the community,” Reubens said. “She couldn’t fulfill the residency requirement. It’s never left her.”

Meng has since rented an apartment in the district, while still maintaining a house elsewhere in Queens. But she says her ties to the community are much more solid than they were two years ago, evidenced by the community center she manages on 39th Avenue and Main Street in Flushing.

“We’re open four days a week,” she said. “It’s mainly helping senior citizens fill out forms and working class families fill out forms and helping a lot of people who don’t speak English.”

Meng has so far outpaced Young in campaign contributions, raising more than $81,000 during the last fundraising cycle compared to Young’s $34,000. But Young still has more money on hand, with $234,000 to Meng’s $147,000.

Beyond that, Meng believes her ace-in-the-hole against Young is the diverse slate of candidates on which she is running.
 Young’s slate on the other hand, she charges, features all Asian-American candidates, except one.

“We have people from all different ethnicities from different parts of Flushing on our slate,” Meng said.

She is running alongside Terence Park, a Korean-American candidate for district leader (who also ran for Jimmy Meng’s seat in 2006); Edwin Salas, a Latino candidate for state committee, Fay Myers, an African-American candidate for district leader; and Julia Harrison (a former member of the City Council and another 2006 contender for Meng’s seat), a white candidate for district leader.

They call themselves the Proven Leadership and Strength in Unity Team.

“We think that it’s time to have an assemblywoman who’s independent and hears the needs of the different communities” Meng said, “not just the Chinese community.”

Young, however, has her own ace-in-the-hole: Council Member John Liu (D-Queens), the first Asian-American legislator elected in New York’s history, a candidate for citywide office in 2009 (most likely comptroller) and a powerhouse fundraiser. Young was a staffer for Liu and carried his powerful endorsement in her 2006 run.

Park, who organized the political unity team, downplayed Liu’s role in the race, saying the Council member’s own political aspirations are keeping him from paying much attention to the Assembly race.

“He cannot really concentrate on a local election right now, he cannot afford to do it,” Park said.

Another dimension in this already highly complex race is Meng’s construction of an opposition between herself— an “A.B.C.,” or American-born Chinese—and Young, who was born in Taiwan. Meng says this will give her an advantage in September.

“I’m someone who was born and raised here. I’m comfortable with the culture. I’m comfortable with the language,” she said.

Park went even further, criticizing Young for being “not very articulate.”

“The mainstream doesn’t like Ellen Young,” he said. “She’s not popular in the Chinese community.”

Other points of division in the Chinese community may weigh on the race as well. Young and Liu both have withstood criticism for not being more responsive to members of the Falun Gong community, a spiritual practice that often finds itself at odds with the communist government in China.

Whoever wins, Meng said the race between her and Young is a positive step forward for Asian-Americans in New York, who have generally been less active politically than other immigrant groups.

“We too can be like other communities who have done wonderfully in the political process, like the Jewish Americans and Latino Americans,” she said. “I definitely see it as a sign of the community becoming more mature and informed about the process.”