PIO doctor pulls off shock US primary win

WASHINGTON: An Indian-American physician who is also an Iraq War veteran won a surprise primary election on Tuesday even as incumbents faced a backlash from voters who claimed the scalp of a distinguished five-term senator from Pennsylvania.
Manan Trivedi, a 35-year old doctor from the Philadelphia suburbs who served as a battalion surgeon during the Iraq War, stunned Doug Pike, a heavily favoured former newspaper editor, to win the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania's 6th District.
Trivedi polled 21,338 to 20,667 for a narrow 50.8% to 49.2% victory, to earn the right to challenge Republican incumbent Jim Gerlach in November, when the entire 435-member House of Representatives will go to the polls at the end of its two-year term.
American voters, evidently angry at the state of affairs in the country, fired a warning shot on Tuesday against incumbents in the November polls, handing out a shock defeat to Pennsylvania Senator Arlen
Specter and nominating a "Tea Party" candidate in Kentucky in the primaries, which are essentially inner party polls.
Specter, a 30-year senate Republican veteran who switched parties recently — a rare occurrence in the US relative to India — lost Pennsylvania's Democratic senate primary to representative Joe Sestak, who will take on Republican Pat Toomey in November. And in Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul, who courted the anti-tax "Tea Party" movement, defeated the state's secretary of state Trey Grayson in the GOP Senate primary for the right to meet Democrat Jack Conway in November. The results broadly suggested voter resentment against incumbents in Washington — regardless of party affiliation — coming as it did after defeats earlier this month of GOP senator Bob Bennett of Utah and Democratic Representative Alan Mollohan of West Virginia.
On Tuesday, another Republican Congressman, David Souter of Indiana, announced his resignation from the House after admitting to an affair with a staffer, accentuating voter disgust with Washington.
This week's primaries set the stage for a five-month campaign for the November polls when the entire House, about a third of the senate, and several governorships will be up for election.
The Indian-American community, meanwhile, delighted in Manan Trivedi's narrow 672-vote primary win, considering he was seen as an outsider who was outspent by his rival Doug Pike, a former editorial writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who had strong labour support and a bigger war chest.