US-Sikh Republican hopes to reverse Obama wave this Nov
IF ELECTED TO THE CONGRESS IN THE NOVEMBER 6 MIDTERM ELECTIONS, HARRY ARORA PROMISES TO BE A “TIRELESS ADVOCATE” OF THE INDOUS RELATIONSHIP
WASHINGTON: Harry Arora, an Indian-American engineer-turned-entrepreneur, is hopeful of reversing the 2008 Obama wave to take back a Congressional district in Connecticut from the Democrats to the Republican party and be the first from the community from the East Coast in the next Congress.
If elected to the Congress in the November 6 mid-term elections, the Baroda-born Sikh promises to be a “tireless advocate” of the Indo-US relationship and strongly push for doing away with per country quota for Green Card, which has resulted in an agonising wait for hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals in the US.
The tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has one of the largest population of Indian-Americans in the US, but so far there has been no representation of the community in the Congress. Arora said he hopes and is confident to break that, by winning back the Democratic seat for his Republican party.
“The reality is that numbers are quite favourable (for the Republicans this mid-term). They are not quite unfavourable as one would think was in 2010 or 2014, when the results were decided only by five points,” Arora, who is seeking to enter the US House of Representatives from the fourth Congressional district of Connecticut, told PTI in an interview.
Trump’s popularity, anti-incumbency against the current occupant Congressman Jim Hames, who snatched the seat from the Republicans in 2008 riding a Obama wave, mismanagement of Connecticut by the Democratic party at the State level, and his own door-to-door campaign all clubbed together gives him the optimism, said Arora, who came to the US as a graduate student 25 years ago to do MBA.
“There is a huge amount of disenchantment or disapproval of the current Democratic leadership at the state level,” he said. “As a result, we do believe that electorates are ready for a change,” said a confident Arora, who, like President Donald Trump, is self-financing a large part of his campaign.
He lived in West Bengal and Mathura before competing his electrical electronics engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering.