SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — Indian American congressional candidate Pramila Jaypal has officially advanced towards November’s general election, making 2016 the most unprecedented of years for South Asian budding politicians.
There are now five Indian American candidates whose names will appear on November ballots: Jaypal, Ami Bera and Ro Khanna in California and Raja Krishnamoorthi in Illinois.
The fifth is California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who is running for Senate. She is poised to make history as the first Indian American to ever be elected to the upper chamber. This year represents the highest number of Indian American candidates to have cleared their primaries for Congress, the previous record-high was two candidates in 2014.
“Fantastic, incredible and exponential,” Shekar Narasimhan, a Democratic strategist of Indian descent, wrote in an email. “And, they are all Democrats.”
According to a poll published this year, 80 percent of Indian Americans lean Democratic, however, the only two Indian American elected governors have both been Republican — Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and South Carolina’s Nikki Haley.
For a community that has grown to three million in the U.S., Indian Americans have come a long way politically — in 1957, Dalip Singh Saund became the first to be elected to the House of Representatives.
Jaypal, a Washington state senator, arrived in the U.S. to study at the ripe age of 16. She began her dive into the world of politics by becoming a leading advocate for civil and human rights focused on women and immigrants. Her campaign received a major boost after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders asked his supporters to pledge to her efforts.
Krishnamoorthi, a former Obama campaign staffer, set the ball rolling for the community, winning his primary in Illinois in March. Harris, Bera and Khanna cleared theirs in June.
