Washington: The so-called Samosa Caucus, an informal group of the Indian-Americans in the US Congress, failed to increase its strength, even as its all four incumbent members were most likely to be re-elected to the House of Representatives in the highly polarised midterm elections held on Tuesday.
None of the more than half a dozen new Indian Americans candidates, many of whom caught national attention by giving tough fight to their opponents and outraising them in the fund raisers, could make it to the House of Representatives, which is equivalent to Lok Sabha in the Indian Parliament.
However, Indian-Americans picked up more seats in the State assemblies. The community sent its member Ram Villivalam for the first time to the Illinois Senate and also elected a Muslim Indian-American Mujtaba Mohammed to the North Carolina State Senate. Chicago-born Villivalam, elected unopposed, became the first Asian-American State Senator and the first South Asian-American member of Illinois General Assembly ever.
For the first time, more than 100 Indian-Americans had entered the race in this mid-term elections, of which over 50 were on the ballot on Tuesday. Among them 12, including four incumbents, were running for the House and one for the Senate, a record in itself. In the eighth Congressional District of Illinois, Raja Krishnamoorthi defeated his Republican Indian-American rival Jitender Diganvker. Krishnamoorthi would serve second term in the House of Representatives.
Pramila Jayapal, the first Indian American to be elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, registered her second consecutive win from the seventh Congressional District of Washington State. In little less than two years, she has emerged nationally as the champion of immigrants, workers and human rights. Ro Khanna was expected to easily sail through the race for the House from the 17th Congressional District of California as he took an impressive lead over his GOP rival Ron Cohen. He was elected for the first time in 2016.
Three-term Congressman Ami Bera, the senior-most among lawmakers in the Samosa Caucus, had taken a lead of about 2,500 votes over his Republican rival Andrew Grant, with over 96 per cent of the votes being counted in the seventh Congressional District of California.
Notably, his previous three electoral victories came only after recounting of votes which took several weeks before the results were finally declared.Indian-American of Tibetan descent Aftab Pureval, 35, lost to GOP incumbent Steve Chabot. He was the first Democrat to get elected as the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts in more than 100 years.