Athletes, parents campaign for high risk sports at 'Let them play...

Jon Campbell | Albany Bureau

Des Moines Register

Long before Andrew Yang built a devoted, internet-fueled following that propelled him into the 2020 Democratic debates, his presidential ambitions were the talk of a small brick church with white columns on a historic street in a Hudson Valley college town.

Yang had taken to attending Sunday services at the Reformed Church of New Paltz with his young family after purchasing a weekend home less than two miles away in 2015.

Even his pastor was skeptical when Yang started telling people he was eyeing the White House.

"At first, I thought what everyone else probably thought — 'Ha ha, great joke,'" Rev. Mark Mast said. "Then I realized he was very, very serious."

Nobody is laughing now.

Olivia Sun/The Register

Yang, 44, a political newcomer, quickly morphed from a virtual unknown to the last New York resident standing in the Democratic presidential primary, outlasting Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio in his bid to take on someone else from the Empire State: President Donald Trump.

He qualified for the first five primary debates, including Tuesday's event in Ohio, with the aid of the "Yang Gang" — his formidable, social-media-savvy group of supporters that helped his campaign raise more than $10 million last quarter.

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Yang — whose signature policy proposal is the Freedom Dividend, which would provide a universal basic income of $1,000 a month to all citizens — is often described as a Manhattan entrepreneur.

His roots, though, are firmly planted throughout the eastern half of New York state, from his early years in suburban Schenectady to his school days in Westchester County, where he honed his taste in music, comic books and video games while attending Somers public schools for a decade.

Now his family shuttles between New York City and New Paltz, Ulster County, where they remain among the 200 or so active members of the church on historic Huguenot Street.

"When they're here, they're in church," Mast said.

Born in Schenectady; Son of a GE worker

Jon Campbell / Albany Bureau

Yang is a first-generation American, born in Schenectady to a pair of Taiwanese immigrants in January 1975.

His parents, Nancy and Kei-Hsiung Yang, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, before moving east when his father scored a job as a researcher at General Electric, a pillar of the Schenectady economy since the company was founded there in the late 19th century.

Yang's mother worked at Blue Cross Blue Shield, according to his 2018 book, The War on Normal People.

They lived in the neighboring suburb of Niskayuna, about 18 miles northwest of Albany, moving from an apartment complex to a modest, two-floor house near the local high school when Andrew was just six months old, according to deed records.

By 1979, when Yang was four, his father — whose name is on more than 60 patents, records show — moved on to a research job with another major company with New York roots: IBM.

The job change brought Yang's family to the Lower Hudson Valley, where IBM has long maintained a major presence.

Yang attended school in Somers

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Andrew Yang's high school years

There, the Yangs bought a home on David Road in the Westchester town of Somers, setting up roots in the county Yang would call home for the next decade-plus.

His mother got a job as an analyst for the Department of Computer Services at SUNY Purchase, eventually becoming the department director.

In 1986, deed records show the Yangs moved to Cobbling Rock Drive, where they would live in Andrew's middle and high-school years.

"To me, it was I think a fairly typical suburban, first generation born in this country (childhood), where I had an older brother and we were very nerdy," Yang said in a June interview on the Rubin Report, a YouTube talk show.

Yang's campaign declined to make him available for an interview for this story, but after the article published Wednesday, he responded to it on Twitter: "These pics bring me back."

Courtesy of Somers Central School District

His older brother, Larry, an NYU professor, also declined to speak, though he noted he "wholeheartedly support(s)" his brother's campaign.

Those who knew him at the time described him as a brilliant student who was both athletic and nerdy, with an outsize vocabulary he credited to his love of comic books.

Andy Yang, as he was known then, was a wrestler and tennis player who had an affection for Dungeons & Dragons and arcade games like Street Fighter II.

"I always tell people that Andy was pretty much the smartest guy I knew," said Daniel Miller, a Somers classmate.

"We always had a little bit of competition in science classes and all that, then we just ended up hanging out and joking about how we were getting our assignments done really fast and goofing off in class."

Concerts and arcade games

https://t.co/sRtlSh5ZSh these pics bring me back. — Andrew Yang🧢 (@AndrewYang) October 15, 2019

Yang and Miller, now a San Francisco-based video-game designer under the company name danbo.co, formed a close friendship that began in middle school.

They would take the train to Mount Kisco to feed quarters into the arcade games at the now-defunct Electric Playhouse. They were the "brains" of the school, taking honors classes together, Miller said.

They bonded over discovering new wave and industrial music, traveling to concerts along the way. He and Yang gleefully bought Catherine Wheel t-shirts after seeing the English band open for the Soup Dragons, a Scottish one-hit wonder, in the early 1990s.

"That's always something that always impressed me about Andy — if he likes something, he likes it," Miller said. "He doesn't worry if it's cool or not."

Yang credits Miller for shaping his musical tastes and style, telling Jezebel he distinctly remembers Miller returning from summer break as a full-on goth in eighth grade.

"Dan had a real impact on my musical taste, and we ended up going to many of these concerts together," Yang told the feminist website. "So I daresay, if I win in 2020, I would be the first ex-goth president."

Miller has a slightly different take: "I would call him more of a skater, new wave kid back then."

An actor and tennis player, too

Frank Becerra Jr./The Journal News

Yang attended Somers schools from 1980 through 1990, according to the school district.

His yearbooks suggest he was an active student, serving as a member of the tennis team and the drama club as an underclassman at Somers High School.

“As a kid, my parents told me that my job was to get into a good college, which involved getting good grades, playing piano at a competitive level, and playing tennis well enough to make my mediocre high school team," Yang wrote in his 2014 book, Smart People Should Build Things.

In 1990, Yang picked up a speaking role in the Somers High School annual drama club production, playing a professor in Thornton Wilder's famed 1938 play Our Town.

The role required him to deliver a lengthy monologue, a rarity for an underclassman, according to Tony DiFabbio, the now-retired English teacher who directed the play.

"He did a spectacular monologue," DiFabbio said. "He stood out in auditions. He was wonderful, and I was so glad he took the role."

DiFabbio, who also taught Yang's ninth grade honors English class, remembers Yang being deeply involved in class discussions about classic literature like Shakespeare plays and Homer's Odyssey.

"He was quite affable and very bright and interested in being part of things," he said. "I wouldn't call him a class clown — that's not the right way to describe him — but I would say he was spirited and effervescent in class."

Racist taunts, finishing school elsewhere

Courtesy of Somers Central School District

His experience at Somers was not universally positive.

In his 2018 book, Yang recalled some of the racist taunts he would endure from students who would pick on his Asian heritage.

Most of the name-calling came in middle school, he wrote. It made him self-conscious and angry, but helped shape his personality.

“Perhaps as a result, I’ve always taken pride in relating to the underdog or little guy or gal," he wrote.

"As I grew up, I tried to stick up for whoever seemed excluded or marginalized. I became a Mets fan. I’d go to a party and find the person who seemed the most alone or uncomfortable and strike up a conversation."

Yang did not finish out his high school career at Somers.

After his sophomore year, he transferred to Phillips Exeter Academy, a highly touted boarding school in New Hampshire. It was an idea Yang came up with when talking with friends he made at a summer program for gifted students — "nerd camp," as he put it — at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

“I pitched going there to my parents," Yang wrote in his 2014 book. "I was kind of coasting at my public school, halfheartedly doing well enough to maintain my general profile as the smart kid but not really pushing too hard.”

Yang finished high school at Exeter, landing a spot on the U.S. national debate team along the way.

Later he would go to Brown University on a partial scholarship funded by IBM. His parents mortgaged their home to help pay for it, he wrote in his 2014 book.

Westchester County mortgage records seem to back that up: His parents took out a $31,000 mortgage on their home in August 1992, when Yang left for college.

Return to the Hudson Valley

Mario Tama, Getty Images

Yang's post-college life has been a major part of his campaign message.

He moved to Manhattan and earned a degree from Columbia Law School. But he quickly gave up on a career as a lawyer after just a few months working for a high-powered firm, Davis Polk & Wardwell.

He eventually became the CEO of Manhattan Prep, a company that offered prep courses for the GMAT and other tests, for more than 10 years.

From there, he launched Venture for America, a training and fellowship program for young entrepreneurs, stepping down as he ramped up his presidential campaign.

In 2015, he made a return to the Hudson Valley, purchasing a 4-bedroom, 3-bath home in the town of New Paltz.

The Yangs — Andrew; his wife, Evelyn; and their two young children — spend most weekends in the fall and winter there, though Yang himself has been there less frequently since launching his campaign in 2017, according to Rev. Mark Mast, the Reformed Church of New Paltz pastor.

Dan Torres, a New Paltz town councilman, said his grandmother — a member of the Reformed Church, a progressive-leaning Christian church — told him more than a year ago she goes to church with a presidential candidate.

Torres wasn't buying it.

"I was like, 'Oh God. OK, grandma,'" he said. "It wasn't until much later that I realized she was actually correct."

The New Paltz home serves as the Yangs' getaway from their Manhattan apartment, which remains their primary residence and where Yang remains registered to vote.

"When they moved here, we treated them like any other people who were coming," Mast said.

From there, Mast and Yang would meet occasionally for coffee and talk after Sunday services. Mast, who called Yang "brilliant," has been a supporter of Yang's campaign, penning a faith-based message in support of universal basic income for Yang's website.

Yang's campaign, meanwhile, maintains an enthusiastic following in the Hudson Valley and Ulster County in particular.

Dedicated Hudson Valley support

Keiko Sono, an artist and a lead organizer of the Hudson Valley Yang Gang, said Yang's push for a universal basic income has endeared him to many of the professional artists and creative types who have long flocked to Woodstock, New Paltz and nearby areas.

A supporter since he first launched his campaign in 2017, Sono said she's been heartened to see Yang's campaign continuing to gain public support.

A Quinnipiac University poll Monday showed he was among several hopefuls with 2% support of Democrats nationally. The leaders were Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (30%); Vice President Joe Biden (27%); and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (11%), a Brooklyn native.

"We're so thankful he is running for president to push the idea of (universal basic income)," Sono said. "I have to say, at first nobody really thought he would go anywhere. But we understood he was doing this to spread the idea."

Those who knew Yang as a young man have enjoyed seeing his national profile rise.

Miller is a big supporter, with a huge Yang 2020 sign outside the window of his San Francisco home. He's been attending Yang's California rallies and events for two years, watching them grow from small gatherings of 20 people to large rallies attended by thousands.

He was amused when he saw a recent viral video of Yang crowd surfing at a campaign event, thinking back to their crowd-surfing days at concerts in their youth.

"That's the thing that is so exciting to me about supporting him," Miller said.

"How often do you get to support someone that you genuinely know is a caring, empathetic person of integrity? And you know this because you know him well and you've known him for many, many years."