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With just over six months left for the American general elections, some South Asian election activists are mobilizing to re-elect U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to the White House. The all-volunteer group, South Asians for Mr. Biden, kicked off its activities for the election season with a virtual event held on April 25 that featured messages from lawmakers and functionaries of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and focused on issues such as reproductive rights and gun control.
The group, like other groups working in this space, is motivated by the idea that South Asian populations in battleground States had exceeded the margins of victory for Democrats in previous election cycles (2020 and 2021 for example). This makes South Asians, like other Asian American and Pacific Islander groups (AAPI or AANHNPI to include Native Hawaiians ), a potential deciding factor in who wins in battleground states.
In a close election, such as the 2020 race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, winning swing states could be key to winning the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. However, Democrats and Republicans are focused not just on the Biden v Trump rematch this year but also other ‘down ballot’ races – crucial Senate and House seats as well as contests for state offices.
South Asians for Biden had reached out to a few hundred thousand South Asian and AAPI voters directly and via its digital and video campaigns in 2020 and 2021, according to Neha Dewan, National Co-Director of the group. Ms Dewan listed the group’s outreach in States such as Georgia and Wisconsin where Mr Biden won by wafer-thin margins ( around 12,000 votes in Georgia for example).
During the virtual event, titled, ‘Mobilizing the South Asian Community to be the Margin of Victory’, Ms Dewan highlighted the work of the Biden administration in areas she said were of importance to the community : reproductive rights (e.g., women’s access to contraception and abortion), curbing gun violence and hate crimes against Asian Americans.
“I know that the calls that were made into Georgia and into Wisconsin, were beyond the winning margin,” said Principal Deputy Campaign Manager for Biden-Harris 2024, Quentin Fulks, in a recorded video message.
The AAPI vote was 4% of the electorate in Georgia, and an important part of the margin (just under 3%) that got Senator Raphael Warnock re-elected the Senate (December 2022), Mr Fulks said. Democrats retained control (51-49) of the U.S. Senate with Mr Warnock - who initially came to the chamber after winning a partial term in 2020 - getting elected for full term in the 118th Congress that began in 2023.
“It’s going to take all of us again in 2024 to make sure that we hit 270 electoral votes,” Mr Fulks said.
The majority of U.S. born and foreign-born Indian Americans lean towards the Democratic Party (as per 2020 data), a statistic the group appears to capitalise on. One of the speakers at the virtual event, Washington (State) Democrat, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal cited data to support the view that South Asian social and political priorities were aligned with those of the Biden-Harris platform.
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ro Khanna, an Indian American California Democrat emphasized that South Asian voters were critical to electoral victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. Mr Biden won the electoral college votes in each of these States in 2020.
“We were key to President Biden and Vice President Harris’s 2020 historic win. We need to mobilize again,” he said.
Mr Khanna, whose constituency includes a part of Silicon Valley, highlighted his involvement with the CHIPS and Science Act, one of the Biden administration’s big ticket policies aimed at increasing semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S. (Mr Khanna was one of the lawmakers who introduced one of the two pieces of legislation that later went on to become the Act).
“There are so many South Asians involved in creating good jobs and Arizona, in upstate New York, in Ohio, as a result of that act,” he said.
Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) AAPI Caucus Bel Leong Hong described the 2024 elections in existential terms.
“We are fighting for a place for us to be in, we are fighting to be who we are,” she said.
Democrats rallying around abortion rights and gun control
Issues important to South Asian Americans – especially reproductive rights, voting rights and gun violence – featured repeatedly through the event. This mirrors the overall approach of Democrats – starting at the top with Mr Biden and Ms Harris – to rally voters, especially women, will who would otherwise have not voted or voted for Mr Trump, to vote for Mr Biden.
Anita Somani, a physician who is a representative in the Ohio State Assembly had a message about voting officials in who would protect reproductive rights.
Abortion and — more broadly — reproductive rights, have been a key electoral issue, especially since June 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a judgement that broadly protected a woman’s right to have an abortion. With reproductive rights becoming a state issue since the judgement was overturned, a number of States have enacted measures to protect these rights, with Ohio residents voting in November 2023 to do the same.
“Imagine that kids are now the experts on how to dodge bullets while sitting at their desks are walking to the corner store,” said Shikha Hamilton, the parent of bi-cultural Indian and Black daughter , who has worked for over two decades on gun violence prevention.
Anita Somani, a physician who is a representative in the Ohio State Assembly had a message about voting officials in who would protect reproductive rights.
Ballot access is an issue
Battle lines this year are also drawn around voting rights with a number of Republican governed states passing tightening access to the ballot. Last year (data as of October) at least 14 States had passed laws making it harder to vote while 23 had made it easier to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
At the South Asians for Biden re-launch, Gen Z candidate for Georgia State Senate, Aswhin Ramaswami, a former election security official, discussed the growing legislative challenges to voting in Georgia. The 24 year old is running against State Senator Shawn Still, who was indicted, along with Mr Trump and others, for illegally trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Americans will elect the next President of the United Sates, as well as a number of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, State governors and local officials on November 5 this year.
