Sam Meas could teach President Obama and Governor Deval Patrick a thing or two about hope. But unlike them, he hasn’t written tomes about himself, which is too bad because you’d want to read his life story. 

“Hope,” he says, paraphrasing his favorite movie, The Shawshank Redemption, “is the only thing.” Hope took him from Cambodia’s killing fields – “a virtual prison” – over landmines, through “a filthy refugee camp” to America. Now the former financial advisor hopes to unseat Congresswoman Nikki Tsongas (MA-5). “I am not an establishment candidate,” he tells me in the most understated of understatements.