Kumar Barve
My name is Kumar, by the way. I’m a member of the Maryland General Assembly. I was elected to the House of Delegates in 1990, and I’ve been elected to three four-year terms and I’m now on my fourth four-year term.

I’ve also run successfully and unsuccessfully as a democratic delegate to the Democratic convention. I represent Central Montgomery County, Maryland, which is the county just north of Washington, D.C. For those of you who are not familiar with the Washington metro area, I represent the last five stops redlined.

I almost ran for Congress this year because it looked like they were going to create a new congressional district where I wouldn’t have to run against an incumbent member of Congress, but it didn’t work out that way.

Let me begin with a story about when I was first thinking about running for the House of Delegates in 1989, and I have to confess — this is not a confession I make very frequently in front of Indian audiences, because the last 12 years I’ve really emphasized that our ethnic background is not a barrier of any kind to winning public elections, but I have to admit I was a little concerned about it (back then).

I will tell you there’s no reason why any of you folks should not aspire to be in elected office some day... I just want you to know that this country is ours; we have a right to govern it, but that right is something we have to grasp ourselves.

As I began to campaign, I began to realize that I had to take my unusual name and the fact that I had a lot of energy and link it to something positive in voters’ minds. And the first time I ran for office I won the election. I did it the old fashioned way, by meeting voters, taking literature from door to door and talking to actual people who have a history of voting in off-year democratic primary elections.

I found that Indian Americans were the most discouraging actually. They assumed that because I had (an unusual) name that I would have no chance of winning an election. I remember knocking on doors in supposedly the most conservative part of my district, the Twin Brooke area, which is near the Twin Brooke Metro Station — this is a neighborhood that was originally populated by veterans coming home from World War II — it was very Catholic.

I knocked on this guy’s door, and he said “Where are you from?” And I thought, oh god here it comes. “Well my grandparents came to this country from India. And he said “No, where did you go to school?” I went to school in Silver Spring in the Montgomery County public school system. That’s all he wanted know. He wanted to know that I was from Montgomery County. He couldn’t care less about my ethnic background, or, at least, that was the impression I got.

I will tell you there’s no reason why any of you folks should not aspire to be in elected office some day... I just want you to know that this country is ours; we have a right to govern it, but that right is something we have to grasp ourselves. Average Americans want Indian Americans to become involved. People in Montgomery County Medical Society are astounded that one quarter of doctors in Montgomery County are of Indian origin and they have four members who are members of the Montgomery County Medical Society.

In 1995, I was given the Legislator of the Year Award. Here’s this room with 500 physicians and three of them were Indian-Americans. For some reason Indian-Americans only want to be members (of Indian organizations). They (American organizations) want us to participate, but they’re not going to force us. I believe that day is going to happen because of you.

Upendra Chivukula
My story is totally different because I never wanted to be in politics. I came to the United States in 1974 in pursuit of graduate education in electrical engineering. (Later) I got involved to see that an Indian American — a South Asian American — got involved in the political process. A number of people were citizens, but not registered to vote; and people who were registered to vote, (were) not coming out to vote — so I wanted to change that.

I had the privilege of working with Kapil Sharma and Frank Pallone when the caucus for Indian Americans was formed. Also, New Jersey had ‘dot busters’ case and there were a lot of people from the Hudson County area that worked to come up with legislation to deter racial bias and hate crimes.

It was a landslide... Basically, I used the skills of engineering, analytical skills and business skills, to develop strategies. What it (my experience) tells you is that you have to be present and show people you are visible.

Basically, if you are silent, people will ignore you, so you have to participate. I called the Democratic party in Summerset County. Summerset County is predominantly Republican. When I called, the chairman was really excited and made me a member of the executive board. (Only) one position was left over. It was the recording secretary. The recording secretary takes meeting minutes. I took it very gladly, took good notes and typed them up. I think no job is small, and that’s how I met a lot of people. I asked them how come we are losing elections. They said we have elections in May. Democrats only come out in November when there are gubernatorial or presidential elections. They don’t come out for local elections. We tried to change the elections to November three times, but we weren’t successful. I said let’s try it for a fourth time, so that’s how I got started on the initiative for referendum.

I came up with the question of basically changing the date from May to November because you had to go out and collect signatures — about 2,500 signatures. There weren’t that many people I knew, but I knew a lot of the people from the county, so I brought them all and came up with 75 volunteers. I asked them, get me five or 10 signatures — whatever you can get. I myself collected 700 signatures. I got the question on the ballot. Republicans didn’t want that question to pass because they thought if elections were moved to November they would lose. They spent $12,000 to defeat that question. I was only able to raise $2,000, so I had to ask people to give me some money. They said, ‘Who are you?’ I put together different coalitions and explained if we moved the elections from May to November, you’re going to save $50,000 every two years be-cause these are special elections, so why do you want to waste people’s tax money?

The second thing I said was democracy — it works better in November. Instead of having 18-percent participation, you’ll more than have 50 to 60 percent participation. I got editorials from all the local papers.

It was a landslide... Basically, I used the skills of engineering, analytical skills and business skills, to develop strategies. What it (my experience) tells you is that you have to be present and show people who you are. You have to be visible. I tell my staff you want to make news, not become news. A lot of people want themselves on the television or newspapers.

(Reported by Anna John Peediyakkal and Vasantha Arora)