Adam B. Lerner is a reporter for Politico.

November wasn’t kind to the political power of Indian-Americans. In the hundreds of congressional and gubernatorial races across the country, only five Indian-American candidates were on the ballot. Three lost. Representative Ami Bera, incumbent Democrat from California, left Election Day trailing by thousands of votes only to secure a narrow victory after provisional ballots and mail-in ballots were counted. Two of Indian-Americans’ biggest victories were the electoral equivalents of shoo-ins—California Attorney General Kamala Harris and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Come next month, Indian-Americans will have only one elected representative in Washington—the same number that they have in the current Congress.

Even the Indian-Americans who weren’t up for election didn’t have a much better November. Unpopular Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal took verbal beatings in his home state from candidates and pundits across the spectrum—many believe he refrained from endorsing a candidate until the runoff because his brand is so toxic at home. Just after the November election, the Indian-American community received another blow when Preet Bharara, arguably the country’s most sophisticated financial regulator as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was passed over for the role of attorney general despite his obvious desire for the job.


But this electoral thumping obscures the truth behind the curtain: The nation’s three million Indian-Americans are increasingly looking to flex their political muscles, and they have one very clear advantage to bring to the money-driven world of modern politics: They’re one of the wealthiest ethnic groups in the United States. According to a 2013 Pew Survey, Indian-Americans’ median household income sits at $88,000, the highest of all Asian-American subgroups (the U.S. average at-large is a relatively paltry $49,800).

The community’s ambitions were on full display at the end of September with the fanfare surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit stateside. The trip began with an appearance Saturday evening alongside Hugh Jackman at Central Park’s Global Citizen Festival on a stage about to be graced by Sting and Jay-Z. Then, on Sunday, before Modi even traveled to Washington for a visit with President Obama, came the pièce de resistance: an early-evening address to nearly 20,000 admirers at Madison Square Garden. The show featured Gujarati dancers, a speaking hologram of the late yogic guru and Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda, a speed-painted portrait of Modi, an acrobatic and laser show and a slate of VIPs including Sens. Cory Booker and Robert Menendez, Gov. Nikki Haley and half a dozen congressmen. Anand Shah, a spokesperson for the Indian American Community Foundation (IACF) that was founded specifically to organize the event, claims it was the largest ever event held in the United States for a foreign leader, surpassed perhaps only by papal masses that have been held at various baseball stadiums.

One attendee, MR Rangaswami, an influential Silicon Valley investor who founded the Sand Hill Group and Indiaspora, a non-profit that brings together leaders within the Indian-American community, explained to me that the community isn’t ready to rest on its laurels quite yet—the other Indian-American leaders that organized the event for Modi see success as not solely economic, but also political. As he explains, “The two parties are looking at us much more seriously now. How do we tap into the resources? How do we get them involved?”

Rangaswami thinks the United States can have an Indian-American president in the next generation—perhaps even sooner if a Jindal, Harris, or Haley hits a lucky streak—but Indians as a whole have a long way to go before they can be seen as an influential group in politics.

But he has a very clear benchmark in mind as he tries to navigate his educated and wealthy ethnic group towards political power: Jewish-Americans. “We’re learning a lot from the Jewish diaspora here and what we have noticed from the Jewish diaspora is that they’re willing to contribute, invest, and write checks,” Rangaswami told me. “Because of the size of India, we could become a much larger community [than the Jews] in terms of population and also in terms of diversity.”

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Though the first Jews to serve in Congress (Representative Lewis Charles Levin and Senator David Levy Yulee) were both inaugurated in 1845, America had a relatively small and uninfluential Jewish population until the 20 th century. Mostly fueled by Eastern Europeans fleeing Russian pogroms, the U.S. Jewish population boomed from less than 250,000 in the early 1880s to almost four million in 1924, when Congress stymied its growth through a harsh quota system. During the late nineteenth century American Jews, largely concentrated in urban areas like New York’s Lower East Side, first became involved in politics through religious organizations and labor groups like the United Hebrew Trades, and first asserted their political voice through Yiddish publications like Abraham Cahan’s socialist Jewish Daily Forward.

Only in the mid-20 th century did the community begin claiming the political and cultural clout it’s currently known for. By then, the Holocaust had further stigmatized anti-Semitism and second- and third-generation Jewish-Americans had acquired their own wealth as professionals. Today Jews make up less than two percent of the population—about double the percentage of Indian-Americans—but the U.S. Senate currently features ten Jewish members and three of the nine Supreme Court Justices are Jewish.

An important factor in consolidating Jewish-Americans political power since the mid-20 th century has been the community’s targeted interest in Israel. Contrary to popular belief, Jews run the gamut in terms of views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But together powerful Jewish-American organizations like AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and J Street, all of which receive much of their funding from wealthy Jewish-American donors, have transformed an otherwise small population’s activism on Israel into a potent force on a wider set of issues. Coupled with an array of wealthy Jewish-American individual donors (among them Michael Bloomberg, Sheldon Adelson, and George Soros, to name a few) this prominence has led to nearly every prominent U.S. politician donning a yarmulke at one point or another in their careers.

Anand Shah believes that Indian-Americans will likely replicate this path—uniting around certain causes close to the heart of the population, like the well-being and future of India itself. USINPAC, the largest Indian-American lobbying organization, was lauded for its highly successful lobbying of Congress to pass the U.S.-India Nuclear Treaty in 2008 (after President Bush first negotiated it in 2005), but has not boasted any landmark victories since. U.S.-India relations cooled notably in recent years as the U.S. began to court China more formally and many Indians have been irked over a lack of visas for highly-qualified Indian engineers. India has faded into the background of the U.S. “pivot to Asia” with American officials quickly realizing the futility in dealing with former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was quickly losing clout at home. And the United States had an initially cool outreach to the newly elected Modi, a Hindu nationalist who has been the only person in the world denied a U.S. visa because of a 1998 law meant to punish those who persecute religious freedom. (U.S. officials argued in 2005 that Modi should have done more to stop anti-Muslim riots in the state of Gujarat where he was chief minister.)

Besides foreign policy, the Indian-American community has also been unable to mobilize on domestic U.S. issues like education reform, health care reform or any other major issue of import to the elite sub-group.

Modi—whose U.S. visa problems disappeared promptly after being elected the head of the world’s largest democracy—rocked the house at one of America’s most historic concert venues and certainly showed that the community is capable of organizing.

Behind Modi’s Madison Square Garden extravaganza was self-assured Chicago-area Indian-American cardiologist Dr. Bharat Barai. Barai has also become an active religious and political organizer, working with Chicago-area Hindu temples, serving on a committee that advised then-Sen. Barack Obama on the U.S.-India nuclear deal (Obama ultimately voted in favor of the agreement in 2008) and culling contributions for preferred candidates. Since 2000, Barai has donated more than $330,000 of his own money to political candidates and committees of both parties, with a majority of his dollars heading to Democrats.

Barai spoke with his longtime acquaintance Modi on May 22, four days before the Prime Minister’s inauguration, about organizing an event in the U.S. Barai has stood with Modi through the U.S. visa ban. Shortly after Modi’s ban, Barai scheduled the first of five videoconferences between Modi and influential Americans (mostly of Indian origin) to discuss investing in India and Indo-American relations. “[Modi] was a very clean, non-corrupt individual, who was part of a political vendetta by some religious fundamentalists [in the United States].”

Then, following May’s conversation, Barai formed the IACF, recruited two panels of esteemed Indian-American organizers, partnered with hundreds of Indian diaspora organizations and distributed tickets to an audience of around 20,000 that contained Indians residing in 47 of 50 American states, all eager to see their homeland’s new superstar prime minister. Barai and Shah claimed that had they been able to procure a larger venue like Metlife Stadium or Yankee Stadium, they could have easily filled it—Barai claims upwards of 60,000 individuals contacted his organization directly requesting tickets. (Barai told me that he’s made the IACF inactive and that all excess funds will be donated to charity.)

Barai is well aware of the impact his coming out party had on the American political consciousness—and what it might portend for the future. His coalition, assembled in just four months, demonstrated that the Indian-American community can mobilize. As he says, “We can always form another organization.”

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Much like Jewish-Americans, Indian-Americans currently lean heavily towards the Democratic Party—in 2013, a Pew Survey claimed that 65 percent of Indian-Americans identify as Democrats, while only 18 percent identify as Republicans. Yet as a group, there’s reason to believe that Indian-Americans votes are up for grabs.

Paul Kapur, a professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School who focuses on U.S. policy towards South Asia, argues that because neither party has yet “really reached out to Indian-Americans … they’re not really captured by one party or the other.” Kapur says that Indian-Americans’ overwhelming support for Obama may stem from the president’s association with the third world. The son of a Kenyan who spent years growing up in Indonesia, Barack Obama was able to capture the imagination of Indian-Americans who identified with his story, despite the fact that, as a group, Kapur believes Indian-Americans are “socially pretty conservative.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, for instance, more than 69 percent of Indians above the age of 15 are married, compared to less than 50 percent of the population at large. (Mitt Romney carried married voters in 2012 by 14 points.)

But that doesn’t mean Indian-Americans like those values playing out in public. Anand Shah quoted the adage “let Gandhi be born, but not in my house” to demonstrate Indian-Americans respect for liberalism in public, but desire for conservatism in the family. LikewiseKapur noted that for Indians who come from a country with a cacophonous democracy filled with numerous coexisting religious, linguistic and ethnic groups, keeping social values private and out of the public sphere is the norm. In India, much of family law differs for Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, and thus many Indian immigrants are likely perplexed by evangelicals’ efforts to codify aspects of their faith in broad-sweeping legislation.

Republicans eager to make inroads among Indian-Americans may be tempted to look to their two Indian-American governors, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Both were born to first-generation immigrants who benefited from student visas, H1-B visas, and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965’s abolishment of quotas that had previously limited the number of Asians that could enter the United States. Jindal’s story in particular has been likened to that of Barack Obama’s—the son of an engineer who immigrated from India, Jindal grew up in Baton Rouge and went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa at Brown, receive a Rhodes Scholarship and become the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana system.

However, both Jindal and Haley have formidable barriers that could keep their stories from resonating with Indian-American donors in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Around 80 percent of Indian-Americans are Hindu and Jindal and Haley have both converted to Christianity (Jindal was raised a Hindu and Haley a Sikh). Both Jindal and Haley have Americanized their first names—Jindal was born Piyush and Haley, Nimrata—and both of their home states contain small Indian-American communities that pale in size, wealth and importance to those in California, New York, New Jersey and Texas.

Unsuccessful Democratic candidate Ro Khanna in California’s 17 th district in the heart of Silicon Valley also claims that the GOP’s outdated views on science could push Indian-Americans in tech, engineering and medicine towards Democrats for years to come. “Jindal…doesn’t believe in evolution,” Khanna told me. “The Indian-American community believes in science.”

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ estimates, nearly a quarter of employed Indians work in information technology or mathematical fields,, a percentage that dwarfs that of the general population, where it’s more like one worker in fifty. And Khanna believes that Republicans who do not recognize the threat of climate change, deny evolution, or dither on so-called “Net Neutrality” could face significant barriers in courting Indian-Americans.

The 2012 National Asian American Survey noted that 72 percent of Indian-Americans were willing to prioritize environmental protection over economic growth (more than any other Asian-American sub-group) and, perhaps most surprisingly, that support for the Affordable Care Act actually rose amongst Indian-Americans when it was referred to as Obamacare.

“I think there ought to be more scientists and engineers running for Congress,” says Khanna, an intellectual property lawyer who worked in the Obama administration at the Department of Commerce and then later on the White House Business Council.

Despite the fact that Bobby Jindal studied health policy at Oxford and famously told the Republican National Committee that they need to stop being “the stupid party,” Jindal toes the party line on issues like evolution and climate change. Khanna believes those sorts of beliefs would make Jindal unwelcome amongst his fellow Indian-Americans on the East and West coasts, where the tech industry primarily lies. Khanna told me that his district, where he lost by less than four points, would reject someone like Jindal who doesn’t seem concerned with “prepar[ing] for the 21 st century.”

Republican operatives looking to tap into the Indian-American community may have better luck with Neel Kashkari, who garnered more than 40 percent of the vote in deep blue California’s governor’s race. Kashkari identifies as a Hindu, is socially liberal and, as a trained mechanical engineer and former aide to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, has developed strong support amongst Silicon Valley’s upper-crust, a group that’s been eager in recent election cycles to wade into political debate with its idiosyncratic blend of libertarianism, progressivism and skepticism of Washington’s gridlock. Rangaswami, who made his fortune in Silicon Valley, says “he resonates very well with our community and in fact a lot of Democrats have given to him.”

Candidates in future elections will confront a rapidly changing Indian-American electorate. Bobby Sharma, a senior vice president of IMG International who began his career on the staff of former Sen. Bill Bradley’s presidential campaign, told me that things have changed drastically since 2000. “Back in 2000, most younger Indians, especially [the second] generation of Indians that have had incredible success, were still in school” and thus held little sway in politics.

Sharma has since seen Indian-American friend and former fraternity brother Raj Goyle run for Congress in Kansas and another Indian-American acquaintance Ravinder Singh Bhalla serve as the vice president of Hoboken’s city council—the first Sikh ever to do so. Living only a few blocks from Madison Square Garden, Sharma was only slightly surprised by the commotion surrounding Modi’s visit. Now that he has seen his community’s organizational abilities, he told me “I think those of us now who have achieved positions of influence will be that much more motivated to get involved.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Rep. Ami Bera won his 2014 congressional race after a recount. Though his race wasn't called for more than two weeks after election day, the delay was due to an exceptionally close contest as well as the protracted counting of mail-in ballots and provisional ballots.