Metro

Espaillat: Congress run my American dream

Like waves of immigrants before him, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat came here as a child, a stranger in a strange land.

Now, after decades of hard work and political activism, he has arrived.

Espaillat has a shot at unseating Rep. Charles Rangel and becoming the first Dominican-American elected to Congress.

A passionate Yankee fan, he used a baseball analogy to describe the symbolism of his campaign.

“Every community wants to have its Jackie Robinson moment,” Espaillat said, referring to the Brooklyn Dodger great who in 1947 broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier.

“It’s a New York story. It’s an American story. The race is about the American dream, and I believe in it,” he told The Post during an interview in a Washington Heights coffee shop near where he grew up.

Espaillat, 57, was 9 years old and knew no English when he moved from Santiago in the Dominican Republican to New York.

As a teenager, he would scale the roofs of houses to help his Uncle Eddie, who owned an appliance repair shop, install TV antennas.

His father, Ulises, pumped gas and later owned his own Texaco station. His grandma was a seamstress, and his grandpa worked at the Ray-Ban factory in Flushing.

“I’m a country boy from Santiago running for Congress,” he said. “That says a lot about the US in terms of opportunity. My election would reaffirm [that opportunity].’’