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)

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In the last few days before the election, I wanted to revisit each campaign’s efforts to reach out the desi voters.

Indians for McCain has new material on their website, including a “Candidate Comparison On Indian-Americans” (sic) which forms an interesting contrast to South Asians for Obama‘s “Barack Obama: Working for South Asian Americans” and Obama vs. McCain Comparison Sheet handouts. The differences between the two websites recapitulate both differences between the campaigns but also differences within our community.

The difference in group names reveals their important differences in their attitudes. Indians for McCain is focussed both on Indo-Americans and on India’s relationship to America. Their candidate comparison covers only American foreign policy towards India, contrasting the candidates efforts on these three topics:

• On doing business with India
• On the US-India Civil Nuclear Deal
• On the U.S. pushing the G8 to include India

This is material designed to appeal to voters who are first generation immigrants, for whom issues of America’s treatment of India are paramount.

[There is also a group called SouthAsians for McCain but they have less material on their website and they are really an Indian-American group. Their banner includes the Indian flag and map, and they have an extensive section on McCain’s views on Indo-American relations which is exerpted from the Indian Express article on this topic]

SAFO’s approach instead stresses Asian American issues broadly. Their candidate comparison sheet is actually the campaign’s generic comparison sheet on all AAPI issues, covering topics such as college costs, immigration, minority health services, and compensation for Japanese American internment during WWII.

This handout is available in Hindi and Urdu, which is an odd choice since I doubt recent non-English speaking immigrants will see themselves as enough part of the Asian American community to care about the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007.

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Election Day is on TUESDAY NOVEMBER 4th and a state of Election fatigue/delirium has settled in like a fog creeping across the country (or maybe just with me). The folks at Projekt NewSpeak put out this short documentary on the importance of the ‘Asian American Vote’ and if they are going to swing the vote this Election cycle (via AngryAsianMan).

Even though the film generally refers to Asian American voters, they used the very desi ‘Macaca effect’ as their prime example. As was blogged about quite often here at Sepia Mutiny, the slurring of S.R. Sidarth a ‘macaca’ by George Allen essentially swung the vote in Virginia to Jim Webb by 0.5% (read Amardeep’s previous analysis here).

Desis may not have critical mass to swing the presidential vote (especially given the electoral college system) but as ‘33% of Asian Indians likely to vote are undecided voters’ a critical event at the local level could swing the vote. Especially with local politics such as Senate, Congress, County-wide and City seats. Neighborhoods with high South Asian concentrations where I was thinking this could be possible for Tuesday’s election were Chicago, New Jersey, Bay area, Minneapolis, pockets of FL, Detroit/Ann Arbor and of course, Virginia.

What say you? In your precinct/city/state, do you have a critical mass of voting desis that your community could swing the vote should a racist event occur on the campaign trail? Do you think the film is right in saying that as ‘Asian Americans’ we have the potential to swing the vote a la ‘Macaca effect’ once again? Is what is happening with Ashwin Madia this year’s Macaca moment? Continue reading →