I like to keep tabs (as best I can) on South Asian Americans running for public office around the country. The latest two are running for state government in Virginia and Maryland. Democrat Supriya Christopher of Virgina may have thrown her hat into the ring as a one issue candidate (in my opinion), but she is looking to get smart on the rest of the issues to fend off the competition. MSN reports:
Supriya Christopher, a US military veteran and mother of two, is a busy woman these days. She is contesting for the Virginia State House of Delegates.Running for an open seat, Christopher feels “tired but energised” after endless fund-raising efforts that have notched $150,000 to date. She is hopeful of bringing another $100,000 for a media blitz in this last round of campaigning before the Nov 8 elections.
“I’m tired but energised,” said the former US Army Signal Corps officer and now a member of the Commonwealth of Virginia Veterans Services Foundation.
She is the first Indian American as well as the first Asian American to run for a seat in the General Assembly.
Christopher, running from what is considered a Republican bastion, feels she is holding her own against Republican opponent Sal Iaquinto, an attorney, and former staff member delegate Robert F. McDonnell, a Republican.
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p>So what is her one main issue? All politics are local.
Virginia Beach, and the 84 th District, is the home of some of the world’s greatest military bases and military families. As a proud Navy wife, I have a personal connection to the challenges we face. My husband Damien is an F/A-18 fighter pilot presently onboard the USS Harry Truman serving in the war on terror. This is Damien’s fourth six-month deployment and second tour of duty in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
When serving as President of the Oceana Officers Spouses Club, I was a vocal, public advocate for Navy families. When the issue of base closure arose and opposition to jet noise came to a head, I spoke at hearings with Senator John Warner, the Navy League, the Association for Naval Aviators and congressional and city officials. I was privileged to reiterate how important it is to keep NAS Oceana open in order to provide a quality lifestyle for Navy families, particularly in the 84 th District. [Link]
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Just across the border in Maryland, Republican Dilip Paliath is running for the Maryland General Assembly. The Hindustan Times reports:
Running from District 42, Paliath, 34, chief counsel in Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, is the highest-ranking Indian in the Ehrlich administration. He has been exploring the run since April this year and says he already has an advantage with the governor behind him.If elected next November, Paliath, whose parents hail from Kerala, would be the second Indian in the Maryland Assembly but on the other side of the aisle from Kumar Barve, the Democratic Party’s majority leader in the state assembly.
The primaries for the race are in September 2006 and the general election takes place in November 2006.
Born and brought up in Baltimore, Paliath ran for the Maryland assembly in 2002 but from a different district.
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p>It may shed some light on what issues might be important to Paliath if we look at what he did for Gov. Ehrlich:
It may be recalled here that Ehrlich claimed he got the mandate from the people for legalizing slot machine gambling in the wake of his November election and outlined a plan to pressure local governments to help him pass the proposal through a General Assembly controlled by Democrats. According to Paliath, slots and the state’s fiscal crisis will undoubtedly dominate the Assembly session.Paliath spelt out the second priority on his legislative agenda as charter schools which provide an alternative to parents and students who may be stuck in poor performance schools. The next, he said, would be Project Exile — a criminal justice program — that would make a five-year jail term mandatory for felons carrying handguns. Paliath also hopes to begin work soon on faith-based initiatives. This, he says, is patterned after the federal model put out by President George W. Bush. This initiative is to empower religious groups and organizations to provide social services to the poor and the homeless as additional efforts to state and federal aid. [Link]
mark, jefferson and madison left a big footprint as regards religious freedom in this country, even back from their virginia days. patrick henry and others actually tried to get an explicit reference to christianity as the national religion, and jefferson and madison, along with smaller denominations, blocked that attempt.* and recall that a jewish rabbi was invited to washington’s inaguration. see the godless constitution for more of the details of the early years. this is not to say that jefferson and madison would recognize church-state separation as it is today, but, it is to emphasize that the founders were products, by and large, of the anti-clerical enlightenment establishment, and so the federal constitution tends to reflect that, even though today our populace is enthusiastically christian.
“In case anyone is interested, the guy who said this is Harold Bloom…”
Ha, I just saw this, who’da thunk it, TWICE in one evening, the man gets an appearance on Sepia…
Anna: is thatenough English minor-y goodness for you? (though alas the great Bloom has strayed far from his marriage-of-deconstruction-and-Kabbalah roots over the last decade or two)…
Don’t be silly– of course she’s flaunting her faith. That’s the M.O. of American politics right now, and that’s why it’s on her campaign site.
That doesn’t mean it’s not genuine. She also mentions her family– you can love your kids and at the same time, trot them out for photo ops.
Religions like Christianity are yet to shake their anti-science attitudes and are thus anti-modern. So, I don’t blame Americans for requiring a person of atheist background for public office.
Does anybody know to which community Supriya belongs? Google was not helpful.
Its funny seeing all this judeo-christian bashing. This similar attitude, rhetoric and language can only be gotten away with in a majority christian country as are most of the democractic, least corrupt countries of the world. People who say they are christian might do stupid things and say stupid things regularly (there the only ones really scrutinized today for what they say) but their christian values protect any non-christian as all people deserve justice not just the religiously privileged sections as in other religions (In Islam the non-muslim, In Hinduism, the non-aryan descended low castes and untouchables). To be fair though, buddhism, sikhism, and possibly jainism are non-judeo christian religion coming up with similar concepts of equality and justice. India regularly has christian bashing (those missionaries forcing everyone to become christian, though no proof for that is every presented and are still barely 2 percent of the population) where non-proveable accusations and insults are regularly paraded in the media.
And using non-typical christians (unitarian, deists, etc.) that were involved in the history of this country to propagate how less christian this country is has a flipside as it could infer that christian majority is more tolerant that portrayed when dealing with non-typical canidates whose values all ultimately come from a christian background. To answer a couple of things said, “Thomas Jefferson was critized for his religious tolerance”, strange enough it was the Baptist denomination that asked him to ensure separation of church and state, yes those same baptists involved in the evangelical movements that seem so vilified by the “tolerant” people in this group. Bernard Lewis in his books on Islam states that this idea of separation between Church and State is a uniquely christian quality as was seen as such by islamic civilizations. A couple of fallacies were mentioned in the anti-christian discussions: Judah Benjamin did not convert but remained Jewish while in the employ of the Confederacy as the secretary of state and was the highest ranking government official till recently of Jewish descent, ironically in the slave owning racist CSA, go figure. Race might of been more important to them than religious affiliation.
Btw christian abolitionists fought and abolished the race based slave trade ending its few hundred year history, juxtapose that against the 5000 year old caste system, which despite the valiant attempts of numerous movements such as the caste rejecting buddhists, and the syncretic faith Sikhs, ending (officially at least) only after the enligtenment of the christian values of a colonizing country.
A lot of wrongs happened in the west, but no religious grounds could be found for any of the wrongs (Jesus said turn the other cheek, not hang your neighbor, Jesus said there is no Jew or Gentile no Man or Woman, all are one, ala spiritually equal) All the great advancements of human freedom were through judeo christian values directly or indirectly as even Gandhi found his inspiration from christianity, influenced particularly by christian anarchist Tolstoy and later applied jain (not hindu as mistakenly portrary) concepts to interpert them (turn the other cheek, non-violence found its expression in the Jain philosophy of Ahisma)
Christianity unfortunately is too easy of a target as its true followers are very sensitive to any wrong against others, but unfortunately others who enjoy the freedoms of a christian values country, frequently feel they can get away with bashing the faith behind those values.
Although Mr. Paliath lost in 2006, look for him in a future race. He is, without a doubt, one of the brightest and committed Republicans in that party and I believe that when people get to know him, his future is unlimited. Dilip Paliath would be an excellent Governor of Maryland one day in the future and I hope he chooses that path to follow.