Washington: The lone Indian-American lawmaker in the US House of Representatives staged a spectacular comeback to retain his seat in Congress after an extended count of provisional and postal ballots showed he had surged into a winning lead. Democrat Ami Bera, a physician from California’s 7th Congressional district that includes parts of Sacramento, led his Republican rival Doug Ose by almost 1,400 votes with nearly all votes tallied when Ose conceded the race.
Bera had trailed by more than 3,000 votes at the end of regular counting more than 10 days ago and looked likely to be a one-tern congressman. But he had maintained all along that he still stood a chance of winning because a lot of provisional and postal ballots remained to be counted and they tend to go the Democratic way.
He staged a similar comeback in 2012 when he won his first term by a narrow margin. So it turned out this time too, much to the delight of the Indian-American community, from which stock he is only the third US Congressman after Dalip Singh Saund and Bobby Jindal.
