Indian Americans regain toehold in US Grand Old Party

The next three months leading to the initial primaries are crucial for both Nikki Haley and technology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

The 2024 United States presidential election season could be a turning point for Republican Party supporters, financiers, and elected officials among Indian Americans. Just as the 2008 presidential poll year was for Indian American Democrats.

In the second biggest surprise as Republicans prepare for a full calendar of their party primaries to choose a presidential nominee, Indian American Vivek Ramaswamy is now in the third place nationally as their preferred nominee for the White House. The biggest surprise is how former President Donald Trump has withstood his spate of legal troubles to remain ahead of all other Republican presidential aspirants in every opinion poll among his party faithful.

A string of data, including opinion polls, documentation by vote aggregators like the highly regarded Five Thirty Eight and the sudden media rush to interview Ramaswamy, point to Indian American Republicans regaining their toehold in US national politics. They were a rising force two decades ago, but their stars like an earlier presidential hopeful, Bobby Jindal — who became Governor of Louisiana — collapsed as mere shooting stars in the Republican sky.

Across the political aisle, 2008 was the best year for Indian Americans in the Democratic Party. As people of colour, they were uplifted on the coattails of Barack Obama, the party’s presidential candidate. Obama was elected in November 2008 as the first African American to occupy the White House. At the Democratic National Convention in Denver that year, the party’s Chairman of the National Committee and a 2004 presidential aspirant, Howard Dean said: “Indian Americans are leading the charge to strengthen our party, elect our candidates and ensure that we build a government that lives up to the ideals that inspired generations of Indian immigrants to make America their home.” He hoped that ethnic Indians at that convention may “include the first Indian American who will manage a presidential campaign. Perhaps they include a future Democratic president of the US.” That was the first time any leader of national stature in the US — Dean was Governor of Vermont — spoke about an Indian American being elected US President.

When Joe Biden, the party’s nominee in the 2020 presidential poll, chose Kamala Harris as his running mate for Vice-President, Indian Americans rejoiced that their time had come and that Dean’s prediction was just a heartbeat away from being realised. But Vice-President Harris has disappointed them. Campaigning by Biden’s side, Harris chose to be identified as Black, appropriating the parental roots of her Jamaican father. It was prudent electorally: African Americans are a huge vote bank. Indians count for next to nothing as voters with only one percent among electors. Harris acknowledges her South Asian heritage only at Indian American events, where she is generous about her Tamilian mother’s values. The Black community in the US counts Harris as their ‘sister’.

In an average of national polls computed on August 1, the only Indian American in the primary field with coast-to-coast name recognition, Nikki ‘Nimrata’ Haley, fared miserably in the fifth place with mere three percent support. Her low standing is a pity because her record as Governor of South Carolina was good by the state’s standards. She brought big job generating projects to South Carolina: like Boeing, which moved into South Carolina, to assemble its 787 Dreamliner aircraft there. Trump made Haley the US Ambassador to the United Nations in New York in 2017, cutting short her second term as Governor. Her three percent backing in the Grand Old Party (GOP) suggests that Republicans are punishing Haley for contesting in the primaries against Trump instead of backing him, their current favourite. Haley is a self-made politician who struggled as an Indian American to come up through the ranks in the US South, not an easy place for people of colour. Her party mistakenly assumes that Trump was her mentor in politics.

The next three months leading to the initial primaries are crucial for both Haley and technology entrepreneur Ramaswamy. If they can hold their own during these early phases of the campaign — when eliminations take place — the future maybe bright for both in 2024. If Trump becomes the Republican nominee and campaigns from jail, he may well choose one of these two Indian Americans as his running mate. Wiser by his experience with Vice-President Mike Pence — who did not back Trump’s attempts to stay on in power illegally in 2021 — Trump may want a novice like Ramaswamy with no political experience as his poodle running mate.

(KP Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.