SAJAforum

POLITICS: Q&A with Dr. Manan Trivedi, congressional candidate

Congressional candidate Dr. Manan Trivedi seems to have a suspiciously fine-tuned resume: not only is he a war veteran in a nation at war, but a physician and health care policy wonk to boot. He's running for Congress in the 6th district of Pennsylvania. SAJA blogger Zeeshan Aleem spoke with him by phone about identity politics, serving in Iraq, and his mother's work for the Obama campaign.

Tell us about the history the your district you’re running in, and why you think a Democrat will be able to win it even though it's elected a Republican Congressman for the past four terms.

The district is a Democratic-leaning district -- it has at least 20,000 more Democrats registered than Republicans. The incumbent built up a moderate Republican base, and was a fairly decent campaigner, and would win by the skin of his teeth every year. He had some name recognition, and that’s why he won in a democratic district. Now he’s gone; he’s not running again.

It’s an open seat, and most pundits predict that this is going to go to the Democratic nominee. The shifting demographics of this district has a lot of younger, more progressive people moving in from the Philly region, the demographics are shifting more toward the blue side -- as is the entire north east 

We are a nation at war, and we are a nation with an ailing health care system. You have served in the military, and you are a doctor.  It’s likely that you have an intuitive grasp of two of the most important – and visceral – issues that dominate the American political landscape.

I do feel I have a unique perspective on these two very pressing issues. Health care is something I’ve worked on passionately for the past 15 years, my entire professional career. And I am very much in favor of this health care reform legislation. Regardless of what happens with this attempt at reform, this is just the first step – we need to continue to fight to get a truly efficient, high quality, low-cost health care system in America …

I served in Iraq with the marines as part of the very first ground forces to enter Iraq in 2003; that experience was quite formative for me. I learned a lot about myself, a lot about my country, and a lot about what it really means to go to war. That experience made me determined that we need people in Congress to assure that we never take that decision lightly again, which I think we need in 2002-3, when we made the decision to go to war in Iraq. I don’t think we went in with the right incentives, we definitely didn’t go in with the right armor, and we didn’t go in there with the right intelligence either.

WEBCAST: Looking Ahead - What the US Election Results Mean

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[See SAJAforum's extensive coverage, sources and resources about the 2008 presidential race]

Looking Ahead: What the US Election Results Mean for South Asia and South Asians in America
Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008 (Thursday in Asia and Europe)
SAJA BRIEFING: A distinguished panel of experts and journalists react to the results the day after the elections. What's the future of South Asia-US relations? How will South Asians in America be affected? Which South Asians might get appointed to senior positions in the government? We will also be briefed on how the various South Asian American candidates did at the state and local levels. 

Listen live or to a recording: 

Here was the timeline of who and what you can hear during the 2.5-hour webcast. You can forward to the parts you want.

00-33: Introductions + The Day After + The Big Picture of US-South Asia relations
in order of appearance

• Toby Chaudhuri, Democratic strategist and deputy press secretary, 2000 Gore campaign
  
• Kishan Putta, founder, Indians for McCain (has worked with the Senator since 1999)
• Stephen Cohen, one of the first Americans to study Indian and Pakistani security policy, is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
• Prof. Phil Oldenburg, research scholar, Columbia's Southern Asian Institute and co-editor, "India Briefing" series

33-71: How the Various South Asian Candidates Did + What the Elections Mean for South Asian Americans

• Kathy Kulkarni, president, IALI, Indian-American Leadership Initiative, a network of progressives and Democrats
• Deepa Iyer, executive director, South Asian American Leading Together (SAALT) and representing the National Coalition of South Asian Organizations
• Asif Alam, president, Association of Pakistani Professionals
• Sanjay Puri, executive director, USINPAC, a bipartisan political action committee representing the Indian American community on Capitol Hill and the White House

71-158: The View from the Subcontinent and Europe + Which South Asians Might Get Appointments + A Melange of Topics

• S. Mitra Kalita, national editor and columnist at Mint, a New Delhi-based business daily and is author of "Suburban Sahibs: Three immigrant families and their passage from India to America." In January, she will be moving back to NYC to become deputy global economics editor of The Wall Street Journal and former SAJA president (calling from Delhi)
• Aparisim "Bobby" Ghosh, world editor and former Baghdad bureau chief, Time
• Aziz Haniffa, Washington correspondent and editor, India Abroad/Rediff
• Mira Kamdar, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and the author of "Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy and the Future of Our World" - calling from Paris
• Aneesh Chopra, secretary of technology for the state of Virginia and a cabinet member for Virginia governor Tim Kaine

MODERATORS: Arun Venugopal, SAJAforum editor and WNYC Radio and Sree Sreenivasan, SAJA co-founder and professor, Columbia Journalism School

As always, you are welcome to quote from anything said during the FREE, WORLDWIDE webcasts (30+) at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/saja

See SAJAforum's extensive collection of posts, sources and resources for the 2008 elections at http://www.sajaforum.org/2008race.html

ELECTION 2008: Indian-Americans on the ballot

[Update: Madia lost the race to Republican Erik Paulsen]

Congressional candidate Ashwin Madia has received plenty of coverage - including this recent piece in the Wall Street Journal and our coverage on SAJAforum - but there are plenty of other desis running for office. The Indian American Leadership Initiative (IALI) sent out this list of candidates across the country. I've linked to coverage or endorsements wherever I found them...

Amarpreet Dhaliwal N/D-CA  (Fresno Bee coverage)
Council Member; City of San Joaquin (Fresno County)

Ash Kalra D-CA (endorsed by this local paper, but running unopposed)
Council Member; City of San Jose (Santa Clara County)

Harpreet S. Sandhu D-CA (calls himself the only elected Sikh in California)
Council Member; City of Richmond (Contra Costa County)

Jack Sidhu N-CA
Council Member; City of Kerman (Fresno County)
Incumbent 2 years

Kish Rajan D-CA (endorsed by the Contra Costa Times)
Council Member; City of Walnut Creek (Contra Costa County)

BYLINE ROUNDUP: Recent coverage of the 2008 Election

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With Election 2008 almost upon us, it’s time to take a look at how South Asian journalists are covering this year’s historic, and seemingly-never-ending-but-nearly-over presidential race. We're also including opinion pieces and broadcast work, on-air and off. Here's a sample of what they've been covering recently.

Aman Batheja has been covering local elections, blogging and writing stories including "In the first five days of early voting, 149,234 cast ballots in Tarrant County" for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. On Tuesday, he’ll be on the ground looking out for equipment malfunctions and long lines while keeping readers up to dated on all the latest election news at the Star-Telegram's Politex blog. Among Aman's finds for the blog is this McCain/Obama pumpkin carving.

Seema Mehta has been tracking VP hopeful Sarah Palin for The Los Angeles Times. In this article Mehta reports from Ocala, Florida, and other locales, where "the crowds adore Palin, who bounds onto the stage in heels to songs such as 'Redneck Woman' by Gretchen Wilson and '9 to 5' by Dolly Parton."

Manu Raju, a reporter for The Hill, which covers all things Beltway, has been intensely following an Election sideshow: the trial of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Stevens is 84-year-old Republican and was convicted by a jury for not reporting $250,000 in gifts. His re-election efforts are central to the question of whether Democrats can claim a filibuster-proof Senate tomorrow. In this article, Raju suggests that Stevens has a bleak future, even if he does get re-elected.

Rajen Anand and Joydeb Roy wrote an op-ed, calling upon voters to support Obama, in India-West. The same issue has a pro-McCain piece by Dipka Bhambhani, in which she compares Obama's appeal with that of Hitler ("Several scholars have made the comparison between the mania pre-WWII and the Obama worshipping.")  Download page_08.doc

Ro Khanna, a San Francisco-area lawyer who ran for U.S. Congress in 2004, showed his support for Sen. Barack Obama through "The strengh of Our ideals," an op-ed for India Currents. 

POLITICS: Update on Ashwin Madia's race

We have written here before about Ashwin Madia, the 30-year-old former Iraq veteran running for Congress as a Democrat in Minnesota (our first item was exactly a year ago, we wrote about charges of race- and gay-baiting recently and our latest was about how a Pakistani-American group had endorsed the Indian-American).

With two days to go in the closely-contested race against Republican Erik Paulsen, here's an update. From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The race, for a rare open U.S. House seat in a demographically changing district, has been hotly contested. A poll by Survey USA earlier this week showed Republican Erik Paulsen with 45 percent support, DFLer Ashwin Madia with 44 percent and David Dillon of the Independence Party at 9 percent.

An estimated $8 million will be spent by the candidates and independent groups by the end of the campaign, much of it on television ads and direct mail.

And much of that has been negative, part of the high-stakes clutter that has combined with a well-financed presidential race and a bitter U.S. Senate campaign. But there's been enough to go around in the district by itself.

Recently the Republican congressional campaign committee was accused of darkening Madia's skin tone in an ad (Madia is the son of parents who moved to the United States from India). Republicans have denied it.

Paulsen, a onetime Minnesota House majority leader, has been accused in one ad of being a career politician, looking out for fat cats who are lighting their cigars with dollar bills.

Here is a news report from KARE-TV in Minneapolis:

Post your comments below.

POLITICS: Rep. Nick Lampson courts desis in Texas

Democrats are predicted to pick up anywhere from 15 to 25 seats in the House, further strengthening the majority they established in 2006. That year, perhaps the biggest sign that the winds were shifting came in suburban Houston, when 11-term Republican Majority Leader Tom Delay was indicted and Democrat Nick Lampson won the seat. Lampson is struggling to retain the seat next month--according to the latest Cook Political Report the race is a toss-up--and if he does lose the seat, to former Navy pilot Pete Olson, it will likely be seen by the GOP as a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy environment.

I grew up in Houston and know plenty of desis who started moving to Sugar Land (which is in the district) in the late 70s, building big houses on tony cul-de-sacs. Now, it seems those same people may hold the key to the race. Anup Kaphle, SAJAforum contributor and a new media fellow at The Atlantic, has collaborated on a multimedia piece for National Journal with Jonathan Maher, examining how South Asians may help decide the election. The project was funded by News 21, an initiative of the Carnegie and Knight foundations. From "Lampson courts both Cowboys and Indians":

But Democrats see hope in the area's changing demographics: The 22nd now boasts a much more diverse constituency than it did when DeLay was first elected. White voters still make up a majority, at 60 percent, but there are also sizable communities of Latinos, African-Americans and, more recently, South Asians. Fort Bend County, in the southwest suburbs of Houston, boasts the state's highest percentage of Asian residents, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

South Asians now make up between 4 percent and 5 percent of the district's population, attracting the attention of Democrats in part because of their perceived tendency to register in high numbers. Unlike black and Latino voters, South Asians don't have a long history with either party. But many are moving toward the Democrats, in part because of objections to the GOP's position on immigration, something that the party hopes will be enough to put Lampson over the top.

The accompanying video is definitely worth watching. It shows Lampson at a fundraiser--one of "a score of South Asian events" he's attended in the last couple years. Comedian Paul Verghese performs a set, and later, as an MC speaks in Hindi and draws laughs, Lampson is shown just sitting and waiting it out. It's a great scene, telling us just how much the political landscape has changed, that these are the swing voters in a former Republican stronghold: men in turbans, women in burkhas.

Some of the local players interviewed for the piece:

• Farrukh Shamsi of the Texas Democratic Party
• Jagat Kamdar of the Indo-American PAC
• Vijay Bhuchar, Pratham
• Mustafa Tameez, Outreach Strategists

Watch the video here.

POLITICS: Charges of gay- and race-baiting in Ashwin Madia race

It's been nearly a year since we first noted the Congressional run of Minnesota's Ashwin Madia, an attorney and former marine who served in Iraq in 2005-06. Madia is a Democrat (formerly a Republican), competing with Republican Erik Paulsen for the seat of outgoing Republican Congressman Jim Ramstad. Now the Minnesota Independent is claiming that Republicans are gay-baiting:

While Republican Party representatives took heat this week for claiming in fliers that DFL candidate Ashwin Madia had the “wrong demographics” to serve the people of the 3rd Congressional District, they got off lightly with respect to the not-so-veiled undercurrent in their attack on Madia’s “lifestyle.” By larding in mentions of Madia’s household (he’s a renter, not an owner) and his hobbies (he’s not a soccer coach), the tacit insinuation that Madia must be gay is made easier to politely ignore. But it appears to be the real payload behind GOP efforts to point out Madia’s purported, um, difference from the stolid homesteaders of the 3rd District.

Madia is 30 years old and single. And that above reference to Madia having the "wrong demographics" comes from a press conference held by Minnesota GOP chief Ron Carey. Carey defends the Republican candidate, Erik Paulsen, saying that "he really fits the district so well, as one of them." The reporters in the room are notably persistent in their questioning of Carey, asking, "How can you not hear a little racial undertone when you say he's not 'one of them?'"

Watch and decide for yourself.

Madia himself has said he doesn't see any racial coding going on. According to today's Cook Political Report, the race is a toss-up.

Read more about the controversy at Sepia Mutiny, as well as Talking Points Memo.

And read this Q&A with Madia, where he states that his brother is openly gay, and that he defended an openly gay Marine against the military's "Don't ask, Don't tell" policy.

POLITICS: PakPac endorses Ashwin Madia for Congress

An e-mail that came to saja[at]columbia.edu shows how South Asians from different countries can find common ground in the U.S.

PAKPAC
Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee

The Pakistani American Public Affairs Committee (PAKPAC) has endorsed the candidacy of Mr. Ashwin Madia to Minnesota's 3rd Congressional District.

The third congressional district of Minnesota that voted 49% for Kerry in 2004 and continues to trend Democrat.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has made this race one of its top ten priorities, and this seat has been held by Republicans for nearly fifty years.

Nearly 40 years ago, Ashwin's parents came to the United States from India with only $19, and they were able to live every dream they had like so many other immigrants to this great country of ours. He is the only South Asian American of Indian heritage running for an open seat in Congress this year and would be the first one to get elected to Congress in over 50 years.

PAKPAC President Dr. Saud Anwar had a meeting with Mr. Ashwin Madia, followed by a multiple meetings and discussions with Mr. Madia's policy director. The endorsement committee of PAKPAC subsequently had a meeting with Mr. Madia to discuss issues of concern. The Endorsement committee unanimously approved Mr. Madia and subsequently the PAKPAC Board approved as well.

PAKPAC believes that Mr. Madia's campaign has widespread support across the political spectrum, having gained backing from business groups, veterans' organizations, labor unions, environmental groups, civil rights groups and more. He has committed to responsibly ending the Iraq War; balancing our national budget and paying down our debt; addressing global climate change and investing in a new, green economy; making health care more affordable and accessible; and standing up for civil liberties.

See more on the PakPac endorsement here. More on Madia,a former U.S. Marine and Iraq War veteran, at MadiaForCongress.com. Post your comments below.

NOTE: The message above says he would be the first South Asian to get elected to Congress in over 50 years. That is not true. There have been two South Asians who have served in Congress:

• Dalip Singh Saund, 1957-1963 (he was also the first Asian American to be elected to Congress) 
• Bobby Jindal, 2005-2007 (now the governor of Louisiana)

POLITICS: Dr. Jamshad (Jim) Wyne runs for Congress from Staten Island

Dr. Jamshad I. Wyne, a Republican, Pakistani-American cardiologist, is running for a vacant open Congressional seat from NYC's Staten Island.

Turns out a former friend he's competing with for the Republican nomination is accusing him of trying to mask his Pakistani heritage. From NYT's Jonathan Hicks:

In just the last week, Dr. Jamshad I. Wyne, the finance chairman of the Republican Party on Staten Island and a candidate for Congress, accused his rival in the primary, former Assemblyman Robert A. Straniere, of trying to persuade him to make illegal contributions to Mr. Straniere’s failed 2001 campaign for Staten Island borough president.

Mr. Straniere, while passionately denying the charges, pointed out that Dr. Wyne, a cardiologist, recently began using Jim in his campaign literature, rather than his legal first name, Jamshad, as he is listed on the ballot for the Sept. 9 primary. That change, Mr. Straniere said, is an attempt by Dr. Wyne to conceal his Pakistani and Muslim roots.
<snip>
The doctor would be better off, Mr. Straniere said, focusing on the issues and not being ashamed of his roots (Dr. Wyne was born in Pakistan.)

“It’s not a crime to change your name,” Mr. Straniere said. “There is no reason he shouldn’t be proud to be a Pakistani and Muslim.”

Dr. Wyne said that he had been using the name Jim lately only because it was easier for most voters to remember. Critics of Mr. Straniere in the party say that he is highlighting Dr. Wyne’s Pakistani heritage to make him seem out of the mainstream in the district, which is nearly 75 percent white.

The Republican primary is on Sept. 9, 2008.

Here's a video clip of an interview with the the Staten Island Advance's Tom Wrobleski:

Post your comments below.

PREZ RACE: Shukoor Ahmed creates LobbyDelegates.com

[See SAJAforum's collections of stories, sources and resources about the 2008 race]

Given all the confusion about delegates and superdelegates for the Democractic race, I spotted this South Asian connection to an effort to get voters to influence all those delegates. Technologist and some-time politician Shukoor Ahmed has created LobbyDelegates.com. From the about us section below:

The idea for the LobbyDelegates.com website originated when Shukoor was continually asked by friends, family and politically active colleagues if he had a listing of Super Delegate they could lobby to support one or the other of the Democratic Presidential candidates.  Everyone knew about the database of all state and federal lawmakers maintained by V-Empower to connect citizens with through the StateDemocracy.org website.  Quickly understanding the possibilities, Shukoor and the Board of the StateDemocracy Foundation soon undertook the development of the LobbyDelegates.com website.
<snip>
Using his solid background in Math (B.S.) and Computer Science (M.S.), Shukoor began developing what ultimately became www.StateDemocracy.org.  Shukoor quit his regular job and begun working full time with some friends, notably Ken Laureys, who had a two-decade background in nonprofit advocacy and a Master’s degree in Government and Politics.

Shukoor chose V-Empower as the name for his firm because his goal was to empower everyday citizens to Victory--by giving the public interest a conduit to lawmakers to rival that possessed by powerful self-interests through their campaign contributions.

In 2007 alone, V-Empower contributed over $90,000 to revamp and expand the features offered by www.StateDemocracy.org as a public service to America’s voters.  An effort is underway to strengthen the StateDemocracy Foundation Board of Directors with new blood, while also seeking sponsorships from corporations and benefactors.

See LobbyDelegates.com and post your comments below.