NO DOUBT ABOUT IT: It’s tough to run for office in New York City, and you’d better be sure you’ve got a healthy campaign fund, an impressive resume, and an uplifting back story before you take the plunge.

John Liu, who’s running for city comptroller, had all three—a well-financed campaign reportedly at about $3 million, a trail-blazing bullet-point as the city’s first Asian-American councilmember, and an immigrant story back story steeped in aspiration and success. (Liu’s father renamed himself Joseph and his sons John, Robert, and Edward after they moved from Taiwan, in honor of the Kennedys.)

So why the hell did John Liu, New York’s high-profile Asian-American councilman, decide he wanted to be known as the guy who was raised in a sweatshop? Especially considering his own family, various newspapers, and his opponent are saying that it isn’t true?

“He came here at 5, and by seven had to work in a sweatshop to make ends meet,” a narrator says in his TV spot, which shows Asian women crowded over sewing machines in factory. “Working in finance taught Liu how to account for every penny, but working in that sweatshop as a kid taught him why we need to.”

Not exactly how Mama Liu remembers it. Jamy Liu, who did work in the garment industry, says she never went to the factory—she brought it to their home in Queens to work on. And John Liu did help his mom out with the work spinning yarn into a ball, but the 25 cents he was paid was his allowance. (His dad, by the way, was a bigwig at two banks.)

So why a sweatshop, exactly? If he’d been Japanese, would he have claimed to have been brought up in a World War II internment camp? As a Korean, would he have cried out for environmental reforms because he’d sucked in nail-polish fumes as a child foot-buffer in a manicurist’s shop? You don’t see primary opponent David Yassky, who is Jewish, claiming he spent his childhood hawking pickles on Delancey Street to waves of Eastern European Holocaust survivors, do you?

Why the need to embellish with a knee-jerk Chinese stereotype to appeal to the broader New York electorate when your story’s already plenty inspirational? (Especially when you’ve already got the Asians-are-good-at-math thing going for you!)

As New York dems go the polls, we’ll see if Liu’s campaign unravels like, well, like a ball of yarn.

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