November 03, 2004

Represent! (-ative)Politics

Jindal elected to Congress: 33-year-old Bobby Jindal was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Louisiana in yesterday's national election. As expected, Jindal won decisively with 78% of the vote. Several challengers split the remaining vote, with no one else getting more than 7%. Jindal follows Dalip Singh Saund, a California Congressman in the '50s, as only the second South Asian American ever elected to Congress.

Aside from being of Punjabi origin, Jindal and Saund's stories differ markedly. Saund was a progressive lettuce farmer who attended UC Berkeley, while Jindal is a conservative Rhodes Scholar who attended Brown and Oxford. But they both persevered in the face of electoral disappointment: Jindal recently lost a close race for Louisiana governor, while Saund won a race for a judgeship but later had to re-fight the campaign:

Saund ran for his friend's office and won. But because he had only been a citizen less than a year, he was barred from taking office. A petition signed by twice the number of people who had elected him did nothing to help his cause... Two years later, he again ran for the judgeship and won despite anti-immigrant bashings made by his opponent who had tried to incite the public with sayings like "Hindu for Judge."

Other elected desi politicians at the state legislature level include Nikki Randhawa-Haley and long-serving doyen Kumar Barve.

Previous posts on Jindal: 1, 2, 3, 4

manish on November 3, 2004 01:13 AM in Politics · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post