Washington: Indian-American Congressmen Ami Bera and Ro Khanna won their respective primaries in California and will run for the Congressional elections on November 6. The three other Indian-Americans - Hirsh Singh, Goutam Jois and Peter Jacob - running for Congress in New Jersey lost their bid at the primary level. New Jersey has a sizeable Indian American population.
Three-time Congressman from Seventh Congressional District of California, Bera bagged more than 51% of the votes in the open primary. His nearest rival Andrew Grant from the Republican party received 32.9% of the votes. In California the top two candidates, irrespective of their party affiliation in the open primary head for the general elections for the House of Representatives.
Khanna, who entered the House of Representatives for the first time in 2017, received an overwhelming 58.9% of the votes in the open primary for the 17th Congressional District of California. His nearest rival Ron Cohen from the Republican Party received nearly 25% of the votes.
Coming from a strong Democratic bastion, both Bera and Khanna are expected to win the Congressional elections in November. “Despite running an exciting insurgent campaign, Vivek Viswanathan came up short in his bid for California state treasurer,” said Gautam Raghavan of the recently formed Impact Project, which is keeping track of some 80 Indian Americans running nationwide this election season. He got just 12.8% of the votes.
A total of eight states held primary elections on June 5 and all Indian American contenders lost their bids. Attempting to unseat the longtime Democratic incumbent Dianne Feinstein from her US Senate seat were 31 candidates, among them Indian Americans Arun Bhumitra, a Republican, and Rash Bihari Ghosh, an Independent. Pakistani American Shahid Buttar made a long-shot bid to replace Democrat Nancy Pelosi. Recent UCLA graduate Shubham Goel was hoping to “fix issues” as new governor of the state. However, the 22-year-old’s voice was not successfully heard. The independent Goel finished last in the pool of candidates with 2,233 votes.
