Another Indian enters California political scene

SACRAMENTO: When Neel Kashkari announced he was running for governor last week, he became the latest Californian of Indian descent to step onto the political stage, the most recent example of a rising trend in one of America's most ethnically diverse states.

Kashkari is part of a surge of second-generation Indians emerging in politics, despite their relatively small population in California.

While Sikh Californians have been farming in California's Central Valley for nearly a century, the last couple of decades have brought a wave of technology workers and entrepreneurs into Silicon Valley, where they have formed a tight-knit, supportive and financially successful community.

Tapping into that donor base will be key to the Republican Kashkari's campaign, even if many donors will have to cross party lines to support him.

The growing roster of candidates and elected officials of Indian descent includes Democrat Ami Bera, a doctor who holds a Sacramento-area congressional seat; Democrat Ro Khanna, who is challenging for another in the San Francisco Bay Area; Vanila Singh, a Republican who recently announced she is entering the same Bay Area race; and Republican Ricky Gill, who attracted millions of dollars from Indian-Americans in the Central Valley before losing a tight congressional race two years ago.

San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon was elected vice-chairwoman of the California Republican Party last year, while Attorney General Kamala Harris, whose mother was from India, is the highest-profile California officeholder with Indian ancestry.

"It symbolises the changing face of California," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at the University of California, Riverside and director of the National Asian American Survey. "Even though Latinos are the largest nonwhite group in the state, there's room for other communities to also break through."

Latinos are about 40 percent of California's 38 million residents and have a solid record of exercising their political muscle. By comparison, Indians make up less than 2 percent of the population, or about 638,000, according to the 2010 US Census.

There is a long Sikh history in the Central Valley, where Kash Gill is mayor of Yuba City and Sonny Dhaliwal is mayor of Lathrop, in San Joaquin County.

But many other Indian immigrants are more recent, and it is their US-born children who are now bounding into politics, Ramakrishnan said.