Next week, the United States could see its first black president. Having learned from the African-American experience, the country's Asians are also finding their political voice and, as Ivan Broadhead reports from Colorado, the groundswell could take one Chinese Democrat all the way to Congress.

On the morning of this year's September 11 anniversary, the final notes of Taps fade from a fireman's bugle and the Stars and Stripes at Jewell Elementary School in Denver, Colorado, is lowered ceremonially to half mast.

"If I can live the American dream then so can these kids, no matter how bad the economy or the threat of terrorism," says Hank Eng, gesturing to several hundred four- and five-year-olds who have broken into an all-American cheer after the minute's silence honouring those who died when al-Qaeda attacked New York and Washington seven years ago.

One of only three Chinese-Americans running for Congress in next week's US elections, Eng is a Democrat and he's hoping that voters in Colorado's Sixth Congressional District (CD6) will turn to him for political inspiration and a way to reconnect with the American dream.

An engineer born in New York, his career has included a stint with the United States Agency for International development (USAid) and 20 years with GE Aircraft Engines. His work has taken his family around the world - Russia at the fall of communism and China at the time of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Indeed, it was while in Beijing that Eng converted to Judaism, his wife Lindsay's faith, making him the only Chinese Jew standing for federal office, and a source of religious fascination for several media outlets.

"People are seeking alternatives," he says. "I look back on the last eight years and feel downright angry. Neighbourhoods in this district are seeing mortgage foreclosure rates go through the roof.

"Families are losing their homes, investments, jobs and health care. Meanwhile, our men and women in uniform are putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan while Halliburton profits ... where's the justice? I'm angry, America's angry. It's time to make a stand for change, and that's what my campaign's about," says Eng.

In the months leading up to polling day, November 4, Post Magazine has gained unfettered access to Eng's campaign. And, beyond the historical possibility of Barack Obama becoming the first black president in US history, it has become clear that another remarkable story is unfolding in Colorado; the story of an Asian-American - the most under-represented immigrant group in the US Senate and Congress - his formidable team of advisers and volunteers, and their chance of winning a congressional election in a district that has never returned a Democrat to Washington.

So staunchly Republican is CD6 that Democratic Party strategists doubted the district could be won, hence funds were channelled to candidates elsewhere in the state. Where Obama raised US$67 million in August and a record-shattering US$150 million last month, Eng's campaign has relied less on greenbacks and more on the currency of conviction to sustain itself.

"I think we'd need half a million to carry this race. So far, we've probably raised US$120,000. But, if we can get Democrats to the ballot box on election day and swing just over half of the independent vote, then of course we can do it," he says as we knock on yet another door in Arapahoe, one of five counties the electoral district straddles.

CD6 extends over 10,000 sq km and covers sophisticated metropolitan areas near downtown Denver as well as remote farming communities out on the prairies. How can one candidate possibly appeal to such a disparate constituency, I wonder, feet aching. Eng does not answer. Instead, the 60-year-old power-walks up a steep driveway to drop in on a family that some of his campaign volunteers, visiting earlier in the day, have reported to be politically engaged but sceptical about his platform.

After letting Eng in, the couple, in their late 30s, attempt to calm two children who are cavorting around the cavernous lobby of a house that was surely worth several hundred thousand dollars more just a few months ago, before the market crash.

The candidate and constituents are soon at ideological loggerheads. Dad, who runs a multimillion-dollar medical fund, is convinced that market forces should be the sole arbiter of efficiency in health-care provision, and mum's apprehension about immigrants is palpable. However, there is something Bill Clintonesque about Eng; a capacity perhaps, with his gentle manners and the earnest interest he takes in other people's lives, to be all things to all men - or at least all Coloradans.

Evolution gradually occurs in the conversation. As the silver-haired campaigner outlines his stance on health care with reference to the occasion he ended up in a third-world hospital after contracting malaria on service with the US Peace Corps, the couple's enmity abates. By the time he takes his leave, they are promising to visit the campaign website for more on his policies.

Eng is too pragmatic to offer the encounter as an example of how to appeal to disparate elements in the constituency. "It wasn't the most efficient use of time and they probably won't vote for me," he ponders as we walk back to the car. "But now, at least, they know my name and what I stand for ... this election has to be about choice and not just another Republican shoo-in."

Between the candidate and a seat in Congress stands Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman. "We're fighting a Republican opponent who is very well known around the district," says Allison Sharpe, Eng's campaign manager, back at the headquarters in Littleton, a corner of Denver that retains a 1970s air.

"We need to do everything we can to make voters think twice before they put a cross next to Coffman's name just because he's secretary of state. So, we're getting Hank out in the community - canvassing, house parties, talks to business clubs, radio, TV; you name it," says the 33-year-old mother of one. "We won't let up."

While no one seems to consider Eng's ethnicity an issue as far as the electorate is concerned, it seems legitimate to enquire just how prepared CD6 voters are to back a Chinese-American - to put a cross next to a distinctly non-Anglo-Saxon name on election day. After all, the district is more than 85 per cent white and for the last nine years has returned Tom Tancredo to Congress, the man who fought John McCain for the Republican presidential nomination from the far right wing. The same man who said of multiculturalism, "If western civilisation succumbs to [its] siren song, then ... we're finished."

Professor Don Nakanishi, director of the Asian American Studies Centre at the University of California, Los Angeles, reasons that racism is still a factor in the election process, albeit a diminishing one. "From simple prejudice in words to quite violent forms of hate crime, [it's] still out there in society," he says.

Like other immigrant minorities, Asians have found acceptance in mainstream America a hard nut to crack. As far back as the 1880 presidential election there were riots across the US, including Colorado, directed against Chinese immigrants, who were accused of taking Caucasians' jobs and spreading disease. Two years later, Washington passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which effectively barred Chinese people from entering the country.

Incredibly, the act was only fully repealed under civil rights legislation in the 1960s and its provisions directly affected Eng's life.

"My dad was what used to be called a `paper son' - after a lot of paperwork, my grandfather got him into America on a visa meant for someone who had already died. And in the family tradition, I'm something of a bureaucratic miracle myself," he says.

"Dad was drafted into the army during the second world war and helped supply General [Claire] Chennault's Flying Tigers [fighter-plane squadrons] in Burma. During leave in Guangdong he met my mother and, like other Chinese women, she would have been refused entry to the US under the Exclusion Act. But dad got her in under the War Brides Act instead and I was born in New York soon afterwards."

General Chennault, who once served as "air adviser" to Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek, himself married a Chinese woman. According to her biographer, Professor Catherine Forslund, Anna Chennault was one of the most important Chinese-Americans of the last century, not only for her influence in US diplomatic circles but also as a woman who worked ceaselessly to promote Chinese-Americans in the eyes of presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

From Washington, a sprightly Chennault, who received her bachelor's degree at Hong Kong's Lingnan University in 1944, gave Post Magazine her thoughts on the lack of Chinese-Americans in US high office: "Historically, I think Chinese-Americans were more concerned about their family, their children's education and making a living. Because of this culture, maybe they were less inclined to politics," she says.

Chennault brushes over her encounters with racism during her early years in the US. But it is perhaps indicative of the history of Asian-American integration in the US that a woman so politically adept took only one government appointment (heading up the President's Export Council under Reagan). "She remains," says Forslund, "one of the most significant Chinese Americans ever to be involved in the US political system; I can't think of anyone else who got their foot in those kinds of doors."

"The good news," says Nakanishi, "is that Asian-Americans are becoming more involved politically and are shrugging off their reputation merely for being a good source of campaign funds." He says that 30 years ago, there were few Asian-Americans in office beyond Hawaii and California. Today there are more than 2,000 major elected officials across nearly 40 states.

Gautam Dutta, executive director of the Asian American Action Fund, a lobby group, concurs but cautions that while Asian-Americans are considered hard-working and well-educated, many still inhabit the periphery of society, particularly Cambodians and Laotians, who are among the poorest and most politically excluded minorities in the country.

Despite the "Asian-American" catch-all applied to ethnicities that range from the Middle to the Far East, one of the more positive things Dutta has observed is the community's growing willingness to compromise on their disparate views and - learning from the African-American experience - form an increasingly influential block vote to promote their interests.

He suggests the strategy first showed tangible results in 2006, when Asian and Pacific Island Americans voted against Republican senator George Allen and his anti-immigration rhetoric, instead offering overwhelming support (78 per cent) to his opponent, Jim Webb. In doing so, Asian-Americans provided the margin of victory that handed control of the Senate to the Democrats.

"The influence of the block vote could be especially crucial in the upcoming race for the White House," says Professor Laura Hsu, a board member of the 80-20 Initiative, a non-partisan political action committee. The 80-20 Initiative, she explains, aims to encourage 80 per cent of Asian-Americans to vote for a collectively selected presidential candidate, and it has recommended its associates throw their weight behind Senator Obama.

This choice was based on a commitment Obama made to 80-20 to help shatter the glass ceiling - or what Dutta refers to as "the pernicious stereotype that Asian and Pacific Americans are good worker bees but not management material" - that continues to inhibit the rise of these minorities both in the private sector and to senior policymaking positions within government.

Back in the predominantly caucasian Rocky Mountains, Eng is standing first and foremost as an American unencumbered by ethnicity. "To rely on a third-, fourth- or fifth generation Asian-American vote, this election would have to be in California, Philly or New York; and that's one of the tremendous things about my candidacy - it says Coloradans are open-minded and colour blind about their political representatives."

One clearly open-minded Coloradan is Stuart Brann, 75, a retired grandfather of eight. Along with dozens of other dedicated volunteers of all races and ages at the Littleton HQ, he is campaigning vigorously for Eng, despite being an unusual bedfellow for a Democrat politician.

"I've been a Republican all my life, and my family traces its Republican roots right back to the Pilgrim Fathers," he says proudly. "But Hank's a good guy trying to do the right thing for folks round here through these tough times - and I should know; I was born June 30, 1933, the day the Dow Jones hit its lowest level in the Great Depression."

Early on Sunday morning, Eng arrives at Channel 9 TV to take part in a live weekly political show. Behind the studio lights, his answers and body language are scrutinised by the ever-present Sharpe and communications director Aaron Cohen, a spin doctor whose youthful features opponents would be ill-advised to mistake for inexperience.

After discussing his renewable-energy policy for Colorado and his views on the withdrawal from Iraq, the pair exchange a thumbs up as Eng alludes to stories that have been swirling in the local media of incidences of electoral impropriety emanating from Coffman's office.

One senses the gentleman in Eng makes him reluctant to broach the issue but he takes the bull by the horns and admonishes Coffman for awarding non-competitive state contracts to the president of an election data-management company - who owned a house in which the state's chief election officer was living rent free. The officer resigned; Coffman did not sack her.

As secretary of state for Colorado, Coffman is ultimately responsible for electoral transparency and fairness, and it would take a lawyer to summarise the growing litany of allegations against him. Luis Toro, senior counsel for Colorado Ethics Watch, steps up to the plate: "First, it came out that Secretary Coffman's elections technology director, a guy who is supposed to act as a neutral elections manager, was running a business on the side supporting the Republican Party ... " Toro pauses for breath, "And then came the next revelation: that his campaign consultant was simultaneously working for Premier Election Solutions (PES) - formerly the much-maligned Diebold - which just happens to be responsible for many of Colorado's electronic voting machines."

"As secretary of state," Toro continues, "Coffman previously decertified three of four types of electronic voting machine in use across Colorado due to worries that they could be hacked, only to recertify one company's machines before all the others. You guessed which one? That's right; PES."

Coffman's office did not return our call to discuss the matter. However, with concern mounting about his politicised relationship with PES and the reliability of the state's voting machines, a source close to the Obama campaign in Colorado was willing to confirm that its lawyers are already on standby for election day.

Unsurprisingly, more and more Coloradans are drawing parallels with the Florida election debacle of 2000. The national press is finally beginning to ask questions too, with The New York Times publishing an investigation that reveals how about 30,000 newly registered Colorado voters - predominantly Democrats - have been struck off the voting register by Coffman's officials, despite federal law barring such actions within 90 days of an election - a rule designed specifically to prevent partisan deletions. However, the Times article failed to make the connection between the Mike Coffman who was running the election and the Mike Coffman who was running in the election.

While historically the odds remain stacked against Eng, Sharpe reports that her polls indicate Arapahoe County, the most populous in the district, is now tied. "Hank's trailing in the others, but our commercials have begun to air on TV and this will put us at a whole new level in the game." She is too polite to mention Coffman's approval ratings across the district which, at 26 per cent, are worse than those of President Bush.

Colorado is now a key battleground state. With the economic crisis worsening, the president's unpopularity becomes more of a problem to McCain and, as Eng departs the TV studios, Sarah Palin is scheduled to land in Colorado to do her bit to secure the state's nine electoral college votes for the Republicans - only to be followed a few hours later by Obama himself, who promptly extends his visit to two days.

There's no question where Eng's campaign is going next: the Denver School of Mines. Surviving the scrutiny of the Secret Service and running the gauntlet of a partisan crowd, the school's auditorium reverberates to chants of "O-BA-MA, O-BA-MA". Grown men and women are in tears around me as I watch Eng take his place on Senator Obama's right-hand side.

Stepping up to the podium, Obama begins his speech by expressing outrage at Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy the previous day. Times have not been this troubling for America since 9/11, he tells his supporters ... and I think back to where this roller coaster campaign began for Post Magazine: it seems remarkable that while the children at Jewell Elementary School's 9/11 memorial service were not yet born when the Twin Towers fell, they might be the first generation to take for granted an African-American president leading their country.

And although Anna Chennault observes tongue-in-cheek that, "At 82 years of age, I wouldn't expect to see an Asian-American president in my lifetime," with campaigners such as Eng serving as an inspiration, those same children just might.