3/3/2004 » Politics

Tom Lantos beat Ro Khanna in the San Mateo (Calif.) Congressional primary yeterday by a landslide, 74% to 20%.

Khanna captured the wealthy, Internet-savvy, anti-war vote within the Democratic party. His level of experience was questioned. The party leadership quashed the challenge to its anointed candidate, Bill Clinton intervened, and Khanna was trounced in the primaries. However, his campaign was lauded for influencing the winner's policies. Shades of Howard Dean!

Running against an incumbent with near-lifetime tenure is always difficult, but this campaign was an investment in name recognition for Khanna and visibility for South Asian Americans. At $300K, Khanna also raised more money than any other Democratic challenger in California. The secret: run in Silicon Valley and raise money from wealthy South Asian techies. The $300K was a trial balloon to fund a native-born candidate with an American accent; angel investors in tech often bundle much larger blocks of funding for startups.

``It's fair to say that Khanna is the underdog -- and then some,'' said Jim Ross, a political consultant who helped run San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's campaign. ``But to raise as much as he did for a first-time campaign is extraordinary.''... Joshi said the effort behind Khanna's campaign is probably one of the best coordinated attempts by the Indo-American community to support a candidate.

There was some notable skullduggery on the way to the polls:

• The SF Weekly, an alternative newspaper, came out with a hit piece the weekend before the election claiming Khanna was actually pro-war and pro-outsourcing to India ("Khanna backers Kanwal Rekhi and Bipin Shah want to export more Silicon Valley jobs to the Third World"). The Weekly's bitter rival had endorsed Khanna earlier.
• The Khanna campaign hit back, complaining the story was racist ("fabrications and racist overtones... The thrust of the article is that, because I am receiving support from Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley, I am in favor of exporting jobs to India.")
• Bill Clinton endorsed Lantos, unhappy that Khanna used a photo with Clinton in a campaign piece
• In a flanking maneuver, Lantos attempted to coopt Khanna's fundraising base by targeting Indian-Americans
• Lantos wiggled out of debating his opponents (Khanna and Maad Abu-Ghazalah) until just a couple of days before Super Tuesday
• Lantos coopted his challenger's position on the Patriot Act and hedged his support for the war in Iraq

This race had some high drama as well: India portrayed as a serious economic threat to the U.S. (laughable). An incumbent actually facing a well-funded challenger in the primaries. A second-wave immigrant against a first-wave immigrant. The party leadership closing ranks around the incumbent. A well-funded candidate backed by venture capitalists running to the left of his opponent. A 27-year-old challenger, new to his district, mounting a strong challenge.

The only South Asian American elected to Congress to date was judge Dalip Singh Daund from California's Imperial Valley in the '50s. There's a good roundup of modern-day Indian-American politicians in the SF Chronicle:

"I sat down a few years ago with a candidate for the state Legislature in Maryland, a Sikh with turban and beard, and he asked whether America is ready for someone like him in office... I said, 'Well, no, at least not right now, but like any group, you've got to get in there, like others have done in previous years... you've got to be willing to lose.' "