INDIANORIGIN CANDIDATES FAIL TO IMPROVE HOUSE NUMBERS

WASHINGTON: All four incumbent Indian-American members of the House of Representatives were re-elected in the US midterm polls on Tuesday, but a handful of challengers of Indianorigin failed to make it to the Lower House.

Indian-Americans also picked up six seats in state legislatures while Josh Kaul won for attorney general in Wisconsin.

All four House representatives, who are Democrats, won comfortably. Ami Bera won a record fourth term in California in a performance that took him past Dalip Singh Saund, the first Indian-American to be elected to the US congress. Saund had served three terms. The other three winners are Ro Khanna in California, Raja Krishnamoorthi in Illinois, and Pramila Jayapal in Washington state.

There was excitement within the Indian community over the fact that a record 12 IndianAmericans were in the final stages of the race for the House. Six of the Democratic challengers were Sri Preston Kulkarni (Texas), Aftab Pureval (Ohio), Hiral Tiperneni (Arizona), Anita Malik (Arizona), Sanjay Patel (Florida) and Chintan Desai (Arkansas). The two Republicans were Harry Arora (Connecticut) and Jitendra Diganvker (Illinois).

“It’s disappointing we weren’t able to add to the numbers, but it’s worth noting that many of the challengers outperformed past candidates in their districts,” said Gautam Raghavan, a former Obama White House official who heads the Indian-American Impact Project, an organisation that supported the Indian-American contenders during their election campaigns. HTC