Indianamericans post record surge in primaries
HIGH REPRESENTATION Community comprises 1% of the total US population
WASHINGTON: As votes in the Arizona state primaries were being counted, a sense of self-satisfied smugness was setting in among Indian-americans. If Anita Malik clinched the Democratic ticket for AZ 6, the tiny minority would for the first time have as many as 13 candidates from both parties running for Congress.
Malik was leading in the count till late on Wednesday as the US completed primaries for the midterm elections in November, when all of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate go to the polls, as do many state houses, governorships and mayorships around the country.
Around 100 Indian-americans started out the 2018 election cycle running for House and Senate to city councils. Of them, more than half will make it past the primaries to Election Day, according to Indian American Impact Fund, a political action committee that helps members of the community run for office.
If Malik wins, 12 Indian-americans will be running for the House of Representatives, including four seeking re-election, and one for the Senate. Two others are in race for statewide posts and 25 for state legislatures and 15 for local bodies.
“This is definitely a surge,” said Gautam Raghavan, a former Obama White House staffer who is executive director of the Indian American Impact Fund.
At about 4 million, IndianAmericans comprise barely more than 1% of the US population. But they are the country’s wealthiest ethnic group — with the highest median household income — and have begun to seek political representation and power commensurate with their economic clout.
“When a community gets organised and starts to not just write cheques but engage politically, the first thing it needs is a wake-up call,” said Shekar Narasimhan, a Democratic strategist who runs a group that promotes Asians running for office.
The wake-up call, he said, came with the election of Donald Trump — “the most virulently anti-immigration candidate in a century”.
Sri Preston Kulkarni, a state department diplomat who has said he quit because he was unable to continue under Trump, wrote on his campaign webpage he is running because the “greatest danger to our country right now is not a foreign power, but the internal divisions in our society”. Kulkarni left the foreign service to run for Congress, but as a Democrat in the deep red state of Texas, his primary fight was not as competitive.
Harry Arora clinched the Republican nomination in Connecticut, a deeply Democratic state. He is in a difficult fight against sitting congressmen James Andrew Himes.
Then there is Shiva Ayyadurai, a Republican hoping to unseat Elizabeth Warren in the Senate from Massachusetts. He pitched his fight as one between a “real” Indian against someone who has claimed to have native American Indian ancestry — a controversial part of Warren’s family history that even Trump has attacked.
It was not immediately clear how many Indian-americans in the 2018 race stand a chance — apart from the four incumbents — but their presence in the race sends a message that politics is the new goal for Indian-americans, and elective public offices their new ambition.