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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p>
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]
There’s also state representativeSwati Dandekar from Iowa.
She looks very lightskinned in this photo compared to some of the others on her site. I noticed the same thing about Toral Mehta as well. Her publicity pic as well as her photos on her website show her as quite lightskinned, although she appears quite dark on her TV footage.
Overheard at a recent SM meetup that Raj Bhakta…of “The Apprentice” fame is also running for public office.
A N N A….can elaborate 😉
argus- same thing with every desi girl on friendster, facebook, etc
huh… i dont care for your ethnic-bashing. she’s representing her constituency’s concerns – did you read the article.
What is wrong with stating her credentials? She isn’t making up stuff, or claiming some obscure fact. She served and has every right to put that forward on her resume. And guess what, she is part of a warrior clan. Her husband IS a pilot and the demands put on military families is pretty high.
So, brown folks can’t be right wing? Every brown person with a conservative agenda is out to ‘wash’ themselves of their brown skin to get votes? There is more depth to the issue than that.
Exactly. The BRAC has far reaching consequences and I could write pages on it. There are jobs, lives, and families at stake and that’s her issue.
I don’t get the sense she’s trying to ‘whitewash’ herself. She has plenty of pics on her site of herself dressed in a sari and mingling with Indian and other minority groups.
I think she’s proud of her family’s military legacy and rightfully so. I never got the sense she was trying to distance herself from the ‘bad’ brown. Besides, she served years ago, way before WOT.
who the hell deleted dilweed’s post? not that it was particularly profound, but it was kind of funny…damn…
get ready, because here it comes:
bullshit.
Yesss. of course. When a brown woman is running for public office, on top of raising children and serving in the military, what could possibly be more important than to observe her suspiciously lighter-skin tone in a photo?!!?
What with the Toral=AllDesiChixBeStuckupBitches comments rampant on the Toral threads, and now this, it really has been a fucking stellar week for brown women on Sepia.
Where’s the criticism for Dilip Paliath? What’s the matter? His appearance isn’t worthy of comment? No generalizations about how Indian men tend to be paunchy? His faith-based platform isn’t that of a “typical Indian politician”?
/sarcasm
I appreciate the commenters who’ve tried to staunch the mysogynistic flow. But undermining women in this manner is really pathetic, and rather horrifying for the women readers of SepiaMutiny.
Iowa in the heezy!!
Um. Sorry to clog up the comments. There’s just not that much to get excited about here in Iowa, so I was stoked to see that.
Isn’t that pretty common, for women in the public eye to be judged by their appearance, no matter what their accomplishments?
Just this morning on the radio I was listening to the DJs blather on about some new evidence about Amelia Earhardt discovered in Japan or somewhere, and one of the DJs goes, “Yeah, but what about her ass?” SO HILARIOUS.
I’ve also heard ‘comedians’ make fun of Harriet Meiers’ eyeliner, for craps sake. She’s not exactly a sex symbol.
This is something pretty pervasive in our culture (Midwest, if not entirely American) and I’m not surprised the desis succumbed to it. I am surprised to see it hear though.
What the heck? This isn’t done to men to nearly the same degree it’s done to women. It sucks coming face to face with the bigotry inside.
Ms Cicatrix:
I did not see any topic on that person. If he is paunchy and is trying to pull his belly in while being photographed, he will invite some comments from me as well.
Ms. A N N A,
Bravo. By the way, I checked out your w e b s i t e. A Japanese expression comes to my mind, Baku-Shan.
argus:
i don’t really care what you think of me, so your attempt to prove that you are hip/sly/funny/whatever by dropping japanese in your comment was meaningless. toral was many things on “the apprentice”, dark-skinned wasn’t one of them. also, unless you’re a child from the south, kindly stop referring to me as “MS.” judging by your comments, i’m almost certain it’s not coming from a place of respect.
patel:
i’m not going to tolerate massive, blanket-y statements like “EVERY desi girl…”
you don’t know every desi girl. cease with the sloppy stupidity please.
From Supriya’s website:
We live in the Christopher Farms subdivision and attend St. Nicholas Catholic Church.
Thank god for that bit of information. Now I know she is a good god fearing catholic lady who does not worship some heathen god.
argus_nj
You “did not see any topic on that person”? Umm..the topic on that person would the this post. The one we’re writing about now. I know it’s hard, but if you read the whole post again, about halfway down, you’ll see:
What fault is there in mentioning how Catholicism ties into her spirituality? She didn’t disparage anyone else’s religion on her website – then why do you disparage hers?
cica, what’s brilliant is he seems to have forgotten that HE was the one who started the “appearance” topic. he didn’t see any topic on the male candidate b/c he didn’t start one. and why should he? Commenters prefer to criticize female public figures at SM.
there’s no difference (IMO) between picking on supriya’s skin vs. paliath’s paunch. yet there was no comment from argus on the latter…hmmm.
What fault is there in mentioning how Catholicism ties into her spirituality? She didn’t disparage anyone else’s religion on her website – then why do you disparage hers?
I am mocking her for publicizing her faith, which is irrelevent to how she will vote akin to the mocking HarryClueless Miers has received for publicizing her evangelicalism.
My bad, I just glossed over the post, didn’t read it in detail.
You see, a paunch is not by itself a bad thing, if the person tries to hide the paunch, he becomes a hypocrite. I find dusky complexion in women adorable. It is a pity that they have to window-dress what could be very attractive to some men.
Sigh.
Argus offers olive branch to Ms A N N A and Ms Cicatrix.
Ohh, but ANNA dear, that’s the natural Indian male Physique, and of course it would be white-washed, stuckup, arrogant desi bitches like us who like to emasculate desi men by pointing out such things.
😀
I have to disagree on this. A person who runs for a public office is open to scrutiny and one of the most important point is his/her ideology. If a person publicly flaunts her beliefs, a practice which I daresay is quite at odds with the philosophy of this country, it would be a cause for concern indeed.
I wouldn’t disparage her beliefs, as long as she practices them in private. But as soon as she puts them up on her publicity website, she is opening the field up wide open.
cicatrix: “Where’s the criticism for Dilip Paliath? What’s the matter? His appearance isn’t worthy of comment?”
I made my comments about him, but since this web site doesnt allow criticism of indian people, it was deleted. And the guy who runs this web site teaches a journalism class? God help those students.
I made comments about his lobbying for slot machines and how this is politician talk for stealing from poor people and giving back to the rich. Thats all gambaling is in states with large poor communites, i.e. maryland, play to the fact that poor people are desperate and take what little they already have.
unless you’ve been unconscious for the last week, you’d know that there is an abundance of [occaionally vicious] criticism of indian people on this site. “toral mehta” mean anything to you?
if your comment was deleted, we had damned good reason for it. now tell me, who is this professor you speak of? i know all the mutineers personally and none of us teach journalism. where ARE you getting this information? i’m waiting with bated breath to know…
“If a person publicly flaunts her beliefs, a practice which I daresay is quite at odds with the philosophy of this country…”
That must be news to the President, and scores of other (not-only Republican; e.g. Senator Lieberman) candidates over the last two decades.
cicatrix writes: >>undermining women in this manner is really pathetic, and rather horrifying for the women readers of SepiaMutiny.
This man on SM is horrified as well by undermining women in this manner. As do other SM men, I’m sure.
AMFD:
She makes her faith public because the ideology of the faith does not teach to keep religion in private. More on this on the Washington Post topic…
M. Nam
Yes, a person’s ideology is fair game to be scrutinized. But I took offense in AM’s comment where he implies that she was flaunting her Catholic faith for votes – as if her faith wasn’t genuine.
begin rant It’s like nobody can genuinely accept an Indian being a Christian if s/he isn’t a Malayalee. end rant
begin rant It’s like nobody can genuinely accept an Indian being a Christian if s/he isn’t a Malayalee. end rant
The fact that she is a Christian/Catholic of Indian origin has nothing to do with what I said. I am not casting aspersions on her because she is Indian. I was lamenting the flaunting of religion by American politicians in an attempt to curry favor with the voters. As a militantly secular person, it offends my sensibilities when people flaunt their religion to get elected. This shuts down the door on atheists/agnostics running for election. A person like Schroder will never get elected in America where politicians from the liberal left to the religious right have to flaunt their faith to get elected.
“As a militantly secular person, it offends my sensibilities when people flaunt their religion to get elected.
The option of moving to France is open.
there is a de facto religious test for those running for office. you can’t be even be a dog catcher unless you have judeo-christian background (someone famous said this, i don’t remember who). the unoffocial the judeo-christian relious test for public office is a good thing, in my opinion. after all, it’s the judeo-christian civlization that gave all the modern institutions like democracy. religions like islam and hinduism are yet to shake their feudalistic attitudes and thus are anti-modern. In the western mindset, these religions mean things like caste, honor killings, bride burning etc. so, i don’t blame americans for requiring a person of judeo-christian background for public office.
You mean practices like stoning, burning, decapitation and strangulation?
Sure, because everyone knows the Evangelical Christians live quiet lives of hi-speed modernity.
As they read the Left Behind series and wait for the Rapture.
I mean, there is JUST NOT ENOUGH DATA to prove that those godless Hindoos and crayzee Muslims virtually skipped over the Industrial age in their rush to better cable and cell service than we get in the States, right? Modern. really.
Cica, I would take you out to a lobster dinner, but then Recov Lib would be offended since shellfish are an abomination to God. How about a tuna salad sandwich?
DesiDudeinAustin,
Tuna salad sounds perfect, and I would love to join you for dinner….but do you have a Judeo-Christian background?
I mean, you can’t get served in a restaurant (let alone be a dog-catcher) unless you swear fealty to Western religious traditions, you know…
RupaI grew up in Iowa, as I constantly tell anyone who will listen…..
Personally, I’d love to move back to West Des Moines, but then I’ve done my big city living and would appreciate a more quiet life. I’d, like, totally convert a barn into a loft and be loopy-midwestern-arty.
Anyhoo, good for all those running for office and getting involved, right, left, and center. Much luck.
Don’t worry Cica, I’ll slip the host/hostess an extra tenner thereby affirming my faith in Mammon, which is the only religion that restaurant hosts/hostesses in tony little joints understand. That way we wont get a table close to the kitchen either.
Incidentally, the candidate’s affirming her faith is her personal issue (or perhaps a non-issue) and is a fair way to present herself to her constituents. God knows, democracy does not run merely on logic. Emotions and shared values are essential tools in a public-figure’s sales-kit.
MD,
You’re totally on the money — IA is really underappreciated; not a bad place to settle down at all! There is enough of that arty midwestern culture that doesn’t feel subordinate, and the cities are really liberal and accepting.
My family is from the cornfields of southern Illinois and we always joked that we were the first Indian rednecks — I think you’re giving us a run for the $ on that title though 😉
From Ms Christopher’s website:
“I call St. Nick’s our home away from home because it embodies everything that is good in a parish community. Ever since I converted to Catholicism”
Being the incorrigble cynic that I am, let me make a cynical observation. Combining this data point with Bobby Jindal’s display of religiouslity, the conclusion seems inevitable that for Indian-American’s seeking public office, being Hindu seems to be a bigger stumbling block than being brown.
argus_nj, i’m busy, so i have little to add of substance, but let me just offer that you are an asshole.
secularism rocks
Bongdongs – true, Bobby Jindal does come to mind.
AMFD – I disagree. Public declarations of faith/religion often work for Christians running for public office, but agnosticism/secularism is the apparent MO for people from other backgrounds who may have public office in mind (e.g. Fareed Zakaria). Perhaps we agree though that this is a problematic double-standard?
since i’m already commenting here, i’ll add some nerdy points
1) the term judeo-christian only came into vogue in the late 1940s, and crystallized under will herberg’s protestant-catholic-jew trichotomy in the 1950s. so back-projecting “judeo-christian” civilization is rather anachronistic, for most of the 1500 years of post-classical christian civilization jews were aliens and totally marginal to culture generation.
2) the importance of religious profession has varied over the course of US history. i think part of the problem people have is with populism, which started with the expansion to universal sufferage in the early 19th century. remember that the first 3 american presidents after washington were arguably non-christian.* both jefferson and madison were philosophical deists, and in his personal correspondence jefferson was pretty clearly a unitarian in his own opinions. john adams was a unitarian. note that unitarians at this period were considered tentativey christian because they accepted that jesus was a great prophet, but note that that would also apply to many hindus. william howard taft in the early 20th century was also a unitarian. so the emphasis on religious orthodoxy is a new thing.
3) there is geographical variation. i note that supria is running in virgina beach. go check out vote smart and note that one of our members of congress, our governor, and many of our state office holders don’t offer up a religious affiliation. this could be an oversight, but part of it is that oregon is about 20% non-religious, and our previous governor, john kitzahber also did not divulge a religious affiliation. so if you want to vote for non-religious politicians, you aren’t going to be doing that in the south. but in a place like san francisco or seattle i doubt that a brown hindu would be nearly as disadvantaged.
4) there are stealth ways of getting elected as a secular person. judaism is a religion and ethnicity, and my understanding is that many jews in elected office are not personally believers in god (about 20% of american jews are atheists from what i recall according to the american jewish survey). another way to be a stealth secularist is expressing a unitarian-universalist affiliation. senator bob packwood of oregon was a UU, and i knew someone whose dad was active in oregon UU congregations and knew packwood, and he told me that personally packwood was aligned with the humanist faction of the church (which is non-theistic, to use a euphamism).**
5) prominent early “jewish” politicians like judah benjamin were assimilated to christian culture (i believe benjamin converted). barry goldwater had a jewish father, but was raised episcopalian.
** UU is non-creedal. about 40% are athiests last i checked, while others are pagans, and some are christians, etc. american unitarianism is genetically descended from congregational calvinism so it is a nice way to cloak yourself in legit. christian clothes without being christian at heart. it was often a choice for jews in past generations when they wanted to be accepted.
but agnosticism/secularism is the apparent MO for people from other backgrounds who may have public office in mind (e.g. Fareed Zakaria).
can we keep it real? WHILE LIEBERMAN BREAKS “JEWISH BARRIER,” POLL REPORTS NEARLY HALF OF AMERICANS WOULD NOT SUPPORT ATHEIST: The August 8 survey results show that 92% of respondents said they would vote for a “generally well qualified person for president” who happened to be Jewish, with only 6% saying they would oppose such a candidate. Similar percentages are reported when asked how they feel about a Roman Catholic or Baptist candidate as well.
A Mormon candidate generates a 79% approval rating, with 17% saying they would not vote for an LDS member.
Atheists do not fare as well, though, according to the Gallup survey, which finds “close to half of Americans, 48%, unwilling to support an atheist for president while 49% say they would.”
also, see this graph, muslims get a 55% fav., atheists get a 35%, from the american public. iz it too mean to point out that aside from tim mcveigh atheists haven’t killed as many americans as muslims in terrorist attacks in the past 10 years????
Thanks but no thanks. I don’t play that game.
Razib – maybe I miscommunicated. What I meant to say is that people from “other” (Islamic, Hindu etc) backgrounds tend to play down their religious affiliations in the public eye.
Also –
1) Excellent point – Arthur A Cohen comments on the same irony! I’d add that the notion of Judeo-Christian civilization ala Alan Bloom and Francis Schaeffer then comes into its own as a fullblown ethnocentrism in the seventies and eighties with the rise of the contemporary evangelical movement.
2) I suspect that a president’s religious faith was an object of public scrutiny during the latter Great Awakenings.
“public eye” should read “public political eye”
I mean, you can’t get served in a restaurant (let alone be a dog-catcher) unless you swear fealty to Western religious traditions, you know…
You cant get elected dog-catcher in the United States if you are an atheist.
In case anyone is interested, the guy who said this is Harold Bloom, the famous American literary critic (author of the Western Canon). He recently said that the whole idea of a Judeo-Christian “tradition” is a myth, the product of American theologians and political thinkers.
2) I suspect that a president’s religious faith was an object of public scrutiny during the latter Great Awakenings.
sure. in fact, jefferson was criticized for his religious tolerance in 1800*. there were speculations about lincoln. i am suggesting that organized evangelicalism simply didn’t have veto power. otherwise, you wouldn’t have had unitarians like millard filmore or william howard taft be plausible presidents, and lincoln’s somewhoat heterodox views and activities were well known (these post-date the second great awakening).
2) I suspect that a president’s religious faith was an object of public scrutiny during the latter Great Awakenings.
sure. in fact, jefferson was criticized for his religious tolerance in 1800*.
I was read in Christopher Hitchen’s biography of Jefferson that he strongly opposed the substituting (through an amendment) of “Jesus Christ” for “Almighty God” in the Virginia Constitution. When his side won, he said that the legislators vote was “proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mahommedan, the Hindoo, and the Infidel of every denomination.”