Indian-americans overcome racist backlash to win polls
WASHINGTON: In the end, the racist, hate flyers weren’t enough to stop them.
Indian Americans Ravi Bhalla and Falguni Patel on Tuesday easily won their respective races in New Jersey in which they had been targets of anonymous flyers that sought to portray them as a terrorist and an outsider, in the case of Patel, from a cricket-crazy immigrant community.
Patel was elected to the education board of New Jersey’s Edison county.
Indian Americans, a community of about 4 million that is aggressively pursuing public office and a role in the country’s politics to match its economic clout, also scored other victories, including to two state senates: Manka Dhingra in Washington, whose victory flipped control of the senate to Democrats, and Vin Gopal in New Jersey.
The fifth win of the night was Dimple Ajmera, to City Council, Charlotte, North Carolina.
Elections were held on November 7 for the state executive, including governors, legislative, municipal and school boards in New Jersey and Virginia and for other state bodies, local boards, judicial bodies and vacancies in other states.
Bhalla and Patel’s elections in New Jersey had drawn nationwide attention, in India as well as in diaspora communities across the world, in the wake of racist stereotypes about them.
Patel featured in a flyer headlined “Make Edison Great Again” alongside Jeremy Shi, a Chinese American seeking a second term on the school board. Their pictures were mockstamped “Deport”.
Just a day later, doctored flyers surfaced attacking Bhalla.