Kumar P. Barve is currently the majority leader of the Maryland House of Delegates. Not only was he the first Indian American to be elected to state level government, but he is also the first to hold such a high position. He was elected to office in 1990, and since then has been a leading member of the Indian-American political community.

“This (coming to IACPA) is one of the things I really enjoy doing. I love coming here. Let me begin by asking this question. Who wants to run for office in this group? Let’s see a show of hands. Okay.

That’s terrific. (Many hands are shown)Let me begin by saying that if you’re a Democrat, Upendra and I will do everything in our power to help you win that election. And if you’re a Republican, we will hook you up with our Republican friends very quietly. (Laughter)

Let me begin very quickly by telling you how I did it and I’m not going to go into a great amount of detail because fundamentally it’s not much different from what Upendra just told you. It all comes down to meeting voters and being on the correct side of important issues. In my year, 1990, abortion rights was the most important issue and I was one among many pro-choice candidates. And also, Montgomery County, the jurisdiction that I represent, is one that the voters felt they weren’t getting a fair share of the money in Annapolis and I ran on a platform of bringing more money for our schools and roads. It was a tough campaign. I will say this. Almost literally no Indian American expected me to win. And when I won, it almost took two or three years just to convince them that I actually had won and that I didn’t have a district that was 90-percent Indian. In any case, I think that they’ve finally now gotten over that because four people are state legislators: Upendra, of course, in New Jersey; Satveer Chaudhary, State Senator in Minnesota; very recently, Swati Dandekar who got elected in the Iowa House of Representatives. Let me quickly tell you about the legislation I’ve worked on. For most of my career in the Maryland General Assembly, I served on a committee, the House Economic Matters Committee which primarily dealt with business regulation, insurance regulation and health care reform. And in 1993, we became the first state in the Union to significantly reform health insurance. We were one of the first states in the Union to prohibit the practice where if you got sick an insurance company could just drop you. In 1995, I was the prime sponsor of the first law in the United States to significantly reform health maintenance organizations.

Upendra Chivukula is a member of the New Jersey Legislature, and represents the 17th District, which includes Somerset and Middlesex Counties. His involvement in politics started 15 years ago with grassroots politics. In 1993, he became a member of the local Democratic Party and was elected chairman in 1994. In 2000, he was elected Mayor of Franklin Township. In 2001, he was elected state assemblyman.

“We have elections this year. I was elected to the state legislature in the year 2001 and I am running for reelection this year. In New Jersey what happens is that Assemblymen get elected every two years . Why I got involved in politics? Our community, the South Asian community, Asian Indian community, especially the first generation --- there are many organizations based on linguistic and cultural (differences) but (there is) no political activism or participation.

So I started getting involved in the political process, getting people registered to vote and getting them to come and participate in the elections. Working on different campaigns I gave a lot of voluntary time electing people to office. I have given money, of course a lot of the time there are two things that are important in politics --- the number of votes you can deliver, and the most important thing is money.

A lot of the times we are tight with our pockets but recently I heard a statistic that really threw me off the chair, that the Jewish-American comm-unity contributes 60 percent of the total Democratic Party contributions. Sixty percent! You are talking about millions of dollars, and when you compare that with the Indian-American comm unity, their contribution, even though we talk a lot about in the Indian media, it’s really a drop in the bucket.

A lot of people challenged me and said you don’t have a chance. You don’t have a Christian name; your name is Chivukula. Half the people can’t even pronounce your name and your first name, people can’t even tell if you’re a man or a woman. I came up with the neumonic break down Chivukula into Chevy and Cola. You drive a Chevy and drink a Cola. So how hard is that?

I had to work six months and I knocked on 3,000 doors. I was elected to my first office in 1997 in Franklin Township Council in Somerset County.

In 2000 we had the Census and the South Asian population was 160,000 (in N.J.). There was an opportunity for me to run for the State Legislature. The district I represent was only 6 percent South Asian so there were a lot issues. Anyway, I had to convince the Democratic Party to get the nomination and in spite of that I had three people running against me in the Primary.