Sikhs are a fairly small group of voters in America, so I’m always intrigued when a candidate reaches out to us.

I expected the Obama campaign to issue Diwali greetings and figured he’d direct it to Hindus, Sikhs and Jains. But I was quite surprised when the Obama campaign also sent a letter to the American Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee to wish everybody a happy Tercentenary Celebration of the Guruship of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. It is a big holiday for Sikhs, but not one I expected any national politician to notice. (There were no official greetings from the McCain camp for either holiday)

As I’ve written before, these sorts of emails to the community are fairly cheap in terms of effort, and are a nice way to build good will, even if they tell you little about a candidate.

More important than holiday greetings was the difference in response by campaigns to the Sikh Coalition’s first ever Voter Guide for Sikh Americans. The Sikh Coalition is non-profit and non-partisan. Their guide invited responses from all presidential candidates (not just the major ones) including the Green Party, Socialist Party, Libertarian Party and even such ultra-fringe parties as the Prohibition Party and the Boston Tea Party.

They received extensive replies from Obama (Democratic Party) and Gloria Riva (Party of Socialism and Liberation) and shorter replies from Ralph Nader (Independent Party) and Gene Amondson (Prohibition Party). The GOP did not reply.

The fact that the GOP failed to respond to the survey was very telling. They could easily have filled out the first question, about interaction with Sikh voters and constituents, since McCain was actually involved in the official response to Balbir Singh Sodhi’s murder in Mesa, AZ in 2001. And the GOP has enough staff that they could have tasked somebody to fill the entire questionnaire out. No, the message associated with their lack of response was quite clear. A campaign won’t bother responding to a questionnaire if they’ve already written that bunch of voters off. (That factoid is actually from Audacity of Hope)

Am I surprised that the McCain campaign has written Sikh voters off? Not really. There is no Sikhs for McCain group out there (at least not one that I could find) and Sikh voters are likely to be alarmed by the latest campaign chant of “John McCain! Not Hussein!” [NYT]. Even worse are reports of incidents such as this:

The white male approached the turbaned Sikh male and allegedly stated, ” I have a gun in my car and since you are a hajii no one will care if I kill you. You know why the police won’t do anything? Because I got blond hair and blue eyes.” As the assailant left, he screamed, “F*** Arabs and F*** Obama.” [Link]

Still, it’s a shame given that there have long been staunch Sikh Republicans going back for decades. Some of Jesse Helms’ strongest supporters were Sikh, Dan Burton regularly raised campaign funds from Sikhs, and candidates like Kathuria ran for the GOP senate primary in Illinois.

And of course, it’s bad news for the Sikhs. To be written off by one party is to invite being taken for granted by the other. While I’m sure there are many Sikhs who will still vote for GOP candidates this election, I’m disappointed that the GOP does so little to make them feel welcome.

p.s. My favorite responses were actually from Amondson who responded to a question about racial profiling by saying “We have to profile, take off the hat if you do not want it….but my friends tell me how to know a Sikhs, I am glad, because I think you are good people.” He also replied to a question about whether he supported the Workplace Religious Freedom Act by saying “I may support some of it…..but some Muslims want dumb stuff.” The man may be a racist, but he’s honest!