Buoyed by the victory of Ami Bera in the US Congressional race two years ago, more and more Indian-Americans are preparing to throw their hats into the ring for the November elections to the House of Representatives and other public offices.
The bids by at least a couple of them could be labelled far too ambitious with no realistic chance of victory, while several others are just bracing for party primaries in the hunt for the Democratic or Republican nomination. The aspirants include Amardeep Kaleka, the Patiala-born son of the president of the Wisconsin gurdwara who was killed, along with five other Sikh worshippers, in a horrific shooting rampage by a white supremacist at the shrine in 2012.
Kaleka, a Democrat, proposes to take on no less a person than the redoubtable Republican Paul Ryan, now serving his eighth term in the US Congress. Ryan, who was Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential running mate in 2012, is reckoned to be among the party’s probable candidates for the 2016 presidential race. But the 35-year-old Kaleka is apparently undaunted by the stature of his Republican opponent. “There’s a fever in the nation, and specifically in this district, for our leaders to stop playing politics and do their jobs. All I want to do is bring a government of, for and by the people back to America,” he says on his election website.
In California, Democrat Bera himself is seeking re-election to the House of Representatives. last time, it was a close race that triggered a recount and it took nearly 10 days for Bera to be declared the winner over his Republican opponent Dan lungren.
It is two other California races that are being closely watched by Indian-Americans this time round. While Republican Neel Kashkari, a former Bush administration official at the Treasury Department, is making an ambitious bid to be the next Governor of California, taking on the formidable Democratic incumbent Jerry Brown. Few fancy Kashkari’s chances in the Democratic bastion that California is.