Many Indian Americans in key races in US state elections

In the countdown to the crucial US mid-term elections, which will decide whether the Democrats or Republicans control not just US Congress but state legislatures and governor’s offices, the Indian American community is coming of age, politically.

“In the US, Indian Americans are a subgroup of one of the largest growing racial voting blocs in the country— Asian Americans,” Neil Makhija, executive director of Indian American Impact (Impact), told Times of India. The organisation which supports members of the Indian American and larger south Asian communities, to ensure that they are represented at every level of government in America, has been heavily investing resources into ensuring a higher voter turnout and electing leaders from the community.

Impact has been running targeted ‘get out and vote’ campaign efforts to engage Indian American voters in the mid-term elections. “We are confident that south Asians will turn out in large numbers as they did for the 2020 election in states such as Georgia,” Makhija said. He added that the Indian American community is a largely untapped source of political power that is steadily growing in voice and action for not just the mid-terms, but elections for years to come.

There are several Indian Americans running for state houses and senates, many of whom have been supported by Impact. Some of the candidates to watch out for include former Michigan state representative and House Democratic leader Sam Singh, who is now running for state senator; Democrat state representative Padma Kuppa, who is also running for the state senate in Michigan and Washington state senator Manka Dhingra, who is contesting again. New York state senator Jeremy Cooney, who is contesting for re-election, was adopted from an orphanage in Kolkata and raised by a single mother. He made history in 2020 as the first Asian American elected to state office from upstate New York. Priya Sundareshan, a professor at the University of Arizona, is a first time candidate for state senator in Arizona.

Indians Americans contesting for state house representatives include Delhi-born Om Duggal (Democratic Party), a hotelier who is running for election to the Georgia house of representatives; Anita Somani (Democrat), a doctor, running for state representative in Ohio; Arvind Venkat (Democrat), an emergency room doctor, contesting for the Pennsylvania house of representatives and state representative Vandana Slatter from Washington state.

Rishi Bagga (Democrat), an attorney and hotelier, is a candidate for state representative of Florida; Megan Srinivas, an Indian American infectious diseases physician, is the Democratic candidate for Iowa’s house district 30; Michigan state representative Ranjeev Puri is in the race again. Indian American Kevin Olickal, who has worked as executive director of the Indo-American Democratic Organisation, is running for the Illinois state legislature.

Kumar P Barve, a Democrat and member of the Maryland house of delegates, who was the first Indian-American to be elected to a state legislature in the United States, is also running for re-election.