opportunity, too, because these candidates are fresh. ... We're a new face, we're not the standard politician you've seen before."

Rep. Michael Honda, D-California, is an Asian-American elected to Congress in 2001, and he agreed that some candidates try to leverage their opponents' perceived foreignness into electoral advantage.

"Some will say this person has connections to China or Japan. ... There's so much out and out blatant racism. In 2010, there were a handful of politicians who used Chinese or Asian languages in their commercials," Honda said, though he added he had not yet seen similar bigotry in the 2012 races.

Honda is no stranger to anti-Asian sentiment in America.

Just a toddler at the time, he and his parents were forced into a Japanese internment camp during World War II --a memory Honda says left an indelible imprint on his career and aspirations.

He said that as he grew up, he increasingly understood the necessity for Asian-Americans to gain a political foothold. But that was difficult, if not impossible, for a population that represented a fraction of the population.

That may be rapidly changing. According to a report released in June by the Pew Research Center, Asian-Americans are among the fastest-growing groups in the United States.

In 2010, 36% of new immigrants to the U.S. were Asians while 31% were Hispanics, the study found. Just a decade ago, 19% of immigrants were Asians and 59% were Hispanics.

The growth of Asian-Americans' political clout tends to favor Democrats.

Of the 30 who filed to run in 2012, 25 are Democrats, according to APICS. About