U.S. Rep. Eric Stallwell. West Virginia state Senator Richard Ojeda. And the founder of Venture for America, Andrew Yang.

All three of these men have launched long-shot bids to become the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, joining a crowded field of at least 25 potential candidates.

On Sunday, Yang, 43, spoke before a crowded auditorium at Shaker Junior High School to make his case on why he was the candidate to take on President Donald Trump. He also signed copies of his book "The War on Normal People."

Yang is the son of a former G.E. employee and a Schenectady native. He's hoping to make history.

If he is nominated Yang would be the first Asian-American nominee of any major political party. As of now he is the first Asian-American to run for the Democratic nomination.

Speaking before a mostly Asian-American crowd at the Chinese Community Center's Chinese School on Sunday, Yang recognized the history he would make. The Chinese Community Center's Sunday school is based at the Shaker Junior High School.

"I want to show that we're as dedicated to public office as any other ethnic group," he said.

Yang's pitch concentrated about the American economy and what it will look like as advances in automation continue to make certain jobs obsolete.

“What I’m presenting to the American people now, the reason Donald Trump is our president today is because technology is making harder and harder for Americans to make ends meet,” the 43-year-old Yang said. “So, I’m running for president on a platform to help America evolve.”

Yang spent his first four years in Schenectady before his father took a job with IBM and the family moved to Yorktown Heights. He went to Phillips Exeter Academy and graduated from Brown University with a degree in economics before getting a law degree at Columbia Law School.

After his first company failed, Yang joined several other entrepreneurs and eventually joined a test prep company that Kaplan bought out in 2009. In 2011, he started Venture for America, a non-profit designed to encourage entrepreneurship and start-up companies in struggling communities.

Yang said that as he traveled around the country for work, he realized the enormous levels of economic disparity that existed, which eventually led him to decide to run for president.

The centerpiece of Yang’s platform is universal basic income, which he is calling the Freedom Dividend. The idea is to give every adult between 18 and 64 a monthly payment of $1,000.

Yang sees it as the best way to help everyday Americans in places where automation and the lack of good-paying manufacturing jobs have decimated local economies. As he sees it, the loss of jobs due to robots and other advances is only going to get worse, putting millions out of work.

When he ran the numbers, the swing states that lost the most jobs to manufacturing went to Trump, Yang said.

“I have friends who work in technology and they’re 100 percent sure that what we did to the manufacturers we’re about to do to the retail workers, the call center workers, the fast food workers and the truck drivers,” he said. “Unfortunately, those are all the most common jobs in America today.”

To pay for the program, which at approximately $2.4 trillion would be more than half the entire United States government budget, Yang wants to institute a value-added tax on the companies that have benefited the most from automation and other technological advances.

Value-added taxes are common in other parts of the world, especially the European Union.

A tax at half the level of that of European countries would raise around $800 billion, Yang estimates. The rest of the funding would come from reduced federal spending as Americans use that money to pay for things like healthcare they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford and through economic growth as that money goes back in to the economy.

“$1,000 a month would be a huge difference maker to tens of millions of Americans,” Yang said. “It would improve their physical health, their mental health…it would be a game-changer for many Americans.”

The rest of his policy positions are in line with most of the Democratic field – single-payer healthcare, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, fighting climate change and reducing the cost of higher education.

As for the actual improbable path to the nomination, Yang says he sees it as a math problem, but one that he can figure out, starting with Iowa. He’s been there seven times so far, laying the groundwork to overcome the odds.

The Iowa Democratic caucus typically sees around 170,000 voters, Yang said. If he can get 40,000 Iowans to vote for him, he believes he’ll capture national attention, giving him momentum in the next few primaries.

“That is the test, that is the only test,” he said.

But his real hope is California, a state with millions of potential Asian-American voters. And the state has bumped up its primary date from June to March for the 2020 election, making it a key stop as the Democratic field sorts itself out.

Yang hopes that being a solid Asian-American candidate will help drive Asian-American voters to the polls in his favor.

He believes a surprise showing in Iowa, followed by strong support in California might put him on the main stage for the final Democratic debate in 2020.

“I’m running for president to help America wake up to the fact that it’s not immigrants, we need to get our arms around the fact that its technology that’s transforming our economy,” he said. “But I’m also running for president to help show that Asian-Americans are just as American as anyone else. That we can contribute at the highest levels, that we care about our country as much as anyone else and that when it comes down to it, we can lead this country just as any other community.”