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From: sri
Date: Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:19 AM
Subject: San Francisco Chronicle on Hindutva in US congressional race
To:
Indian PAC founder behind new candidate for Honda seatCarla
MarinucciUpdated 10:48 pm, Monday, January 27, 2014
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Indian-PAC-founder-behind-new-candidate-for-Honda-5180333.php#photo-5783476
Vanila Singh poses for a portrait on Thursday, January 23, 2014 in
Fremont, Calif. Vanila Singh is running for Congress in California's
17th Congressional district.
If Silicon Valley's Democrat-versus-Democrat House race wasn't already
combative enough, now a first-time Republican candidate has jumped in
and ignited a new drama - one starring a conservative, wealthy Indian
American donor and a politician at the center of ethnic conflicts
raging half a world away.
Vanila Singh, a Stanford Medical Centeranesthesiologist, says she
entered the South Bay contest because it is "time to do my civic
duty."
But critics say the man who recruited her to run, Chicago businessman
Shalabh "Shalli" Kumar, has a far more divisive agenda.
Born in India and brought to the U.S. as a toddler, the 43-year-old
Singh acknowledges she never considered a political career until
Kumar, founder of a super PAC, Indian Americans for Freedom, asked in
October whether she would be interested in jumping into a race that
featured two Democrats - the seven-term incumbent Mike Honda of San
Jose and his main challenger, former Obama administration trade
representative Ro Khanna.
Kumar was "a very nice gentleman" seeking "Indian Americans who might
be interested in running," said Singh, who lives in Fremont. After
"multiple conversations" with him and other Republican insiders late
last year, she filed to run Dec. 26 - one day after switching her
voter registration from "decline to state" to Republican.
In recent weeks, Singh met in Washington, D.C., with Kumar, who chairs
the Indian American Advisory Council of the House Republican
Conference.
Meeting key players
"Because of him, I was able to meet the congressional leaders," Singh
said. He also opened the door to introductions to other key players in
the National Republican Congressional Committee and the chairman of
the California Republican Party, Jim Brulte.
The GOP committee designated her "one to watch" in its national "Young
Guns" program to encourage promising candidates.
Kumar - who did not return phone calls or e-mails from The Chronicle -
told the publication IndiaWest that he approached Singh to be part of
a "project" he founded with Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. Their plan,
he told the paper, was to build a GOP congressional "team" that
supports a "pro-India" agenda.
Kumar told IndiaWest that had Khanna - who, like Singh, is Indian
American - been "free of (House Minority Leader Nancy) Pelosi's whip,"
and willing to sign on to his agenda, he would have received the
Indian super PAC's support.
That agenda, according to several Indian American publications,
includes securing a visa for the man Kumar has called his "idol,"
Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist and leading candidate for prime
minister in India's upcoming elections.
Barred from U.S.
Modi is one of India's most prominent and polarizing politicians. In
2005, the State Department barred him from entering the U.S. because
of alleged human rights and religious rights violations in his home
state of Gujarat, stemming from riots in 2002 in which nearly 1,000
Muslims were killed. Modi, who was Gujarat's head of state, has denied
wrongdoing.
Singh said she has received no money and "no promises" from Kumar or
his super PAC, which can spend unlimited amounts as long as it doesn't
coordinate directly with the candidate.
"I'm not part of his project per se," and Kumar's agenda "is not
mine," Singh said. Her campaign, she said, "will only happen on my
terms. ... He gets credit for initiating the interest, but beyond
that, it's all me."
Singh says she raised $100,000 in the five days after declaring her
candidacy, including $25,000 of her own money. The rest, she said,
came from about "20 family and friends."
Kumar's tactics
Raja Swamy, spokesman for the Coalition Against Genocide, a human
rights group in Washington, D.C., said Kumar was recently reprimanded
by GOP officials after his Indian policy group used the House of
Representatives seal to suggest its endorsement of a Capitol Hill
event he sponsored in support of Modi.
Kumar's super PAC could alter the dynamics of the South Bay race,
should he choose to back Singh financially. In 2002, the super PAC
spent $500,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Rep. Tammy
Duckworth, D-Ill., including producing an ad set to Middle Eastern
music that showed the double amputee Iraq war veteran wearing a
headscarf during a visit to a local Muslim community center.
The Republican candidate that year was a Tea Party favorite, Joe
Walsh. This year, Kumar is backing another candidate to oust Duckworth
- an Indian American health care executive, Manju Goel.
'No stake' here
"Mr. Kumar really has no stake in California, and I'm pretty sure he
really doesn't give a hoot about what California wants" in a
congressional candidate, Swamy said. "He's interested in amassing
support for Modi."
Pressed about her views regarding the denial of Modi's visa, Singh
said the U.S. should "take another look" at the decision. "It would be
regretful if certain groups that have certain agendas would make the
policy for the United States," Singh said. "U.S. policy came about
because people pressured them."
Her position stands in contrast to Honda and Khanna - and to Rep. Ami
Bera, D-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), the only Indian American member
of the House - who have said there is no reason to change the State
Department's ruling.
Muslims' concerns
Singh's links to Kumar raise alarms for Khalid Azam, a member of the
American Indian Muslim Council and longtime resident of the district,
home to one of the highest concentrations of South Asians in the
nation.
"It is definitively a matter of great concern for the South Asian
community - the Muslim community and the entire Indian community,"
Azam said.
Singh's candidacy is "even more alarming," he said, because of her
activism with the Hindu American Foundation - a group whose more
fundamentalist factions back a Hindu supremacist movement in India.
The foundation has denied any connection to Hindu nationalist
movements, and Singh said her connection to the group consisted of
volunteer work intended to strengthen her family's connection to her
native country.
Singh says her chief interest in running for Congress is to undo
President Obama's Affordable Care Act. As a doctor at Stanford, she
says, she has seen the law's detrimental effects on patients, medical
professionals and small businesses.
On social issues, Singh says she favors abortion rights and same-sex
marriage rights. But she has not been politically active.
Missed elections
Alameda County registrar's records show Singh has voted in just five
elections since 2002, when she registered to vote for the first time
at age 31.
Singh said her schedules as a medical student, and later as a doctor
and a mother of two, were often to blame for her voting lapses. When
she did vote, she said, she always followed the Republican line.
"Decline to state doesn't mean you're not" a Republican, she said. "It
never even occurred to me that I wasn't" a registered Republican until
she was preparing to file for the congressional race, she said, and
"thought I'd better check."
Allen Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, which
tracks congressional races, said that "the only reason for someone to
invest in that (race) would be to siphon votes away from Khanna,"
Honda's Indian American challenger.
"There's no way a Republican can win that seat," in a district with
barely 20 percent GOP registration, he said. "Games are being played -
but the motivation is purely speculation."
Carla Marinucci is the senior political writer at The San Francisco
Chronicle. E-mail:cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cmarinucci
From: sri
Date: Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 5:19 AM
Subject: San Francisco Chronicle on Hindutva in US congressional race
To:
Indian PAC founder behind new candidate for Honda seatCarla
MarinucciUpdated 10:48 pm, Monday, January 27, 2014
http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Indian-PAC-founder-behind-new-candidate-for-Honda-5180333.php#photo-5783476
Vanila Singh poses for a portrait on Thursday, January 23, 2014 in
Fremont, Calif. Vanila Singh is running for Congress in California's
17th Congressional district.
If Silicon Valley's Democrat-versus-Democrat House race wasn't already
combative enough, now a first-time Republican candidate has jumped in
and ignited a new drama - one starring a conservative, wealthy Indian
American donor and a politician at the center of ethnic conflicts
raging half a world away.
Vanila Singh, a Stanford Medical Centeranesthesiologist, says she
entered the South Bay contest because it is "time to do my civic
duty."
But critics say the man who recruited her to run, Chicago businessman
Shalabh "Shalli" Kumar, has a far more divisive agenda.
Born in India and brought to the U.S. as a toddler, the 43-year-old
Singh acknowledges she never considered a political career until
Kumar, founder of a super PAC, Indian Americans for Freedom, asked in
October whether she would be interested in jumping into a race that
featured two Democrats - the seven-term incumbent Mike Honda of San
Jose and his main challenger, former Obama administration trade
representative Ro Khanna.
Kumar was "a very nice gentleman" seeking "Indian Americans who might
be interested in running," said Singh, who lives in Fremont. After
"multiple conversations" with him and other Republican insiders late
last year, she filed to run Dec. 26 - one day after switching her
voter registration from "decline to state" to Republican.
In recent weeks, Singh met in Washington, D.C., with Kumar, who chairs
the Indian American Advisory Council of the House Republican
Conference.
Meeting key players
"Because of him, I was able to meet the congressional leaders," Singh
said. He also opened the door to introductions to other key players in
the National Republican Congressional Committee and the chairman of
the California Republican Party, Jim Brulte.
The GOP committee designated her "one to watch" in its national "Young
Guns" program to encourage promising candidates.
Kumar - who did not return phone calls or e-mails from The Chronicle -
told the publication IndiaWest that he approached Singh to be part of
a "project" he founded with Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. Their plan,
he told the paper, was to build a GOP congressional "team" that
supports a "pro-India" agenda.
Kumar told IndiaWest that had Khanna - who, like Singh, is Indian
American - been "free of (House Minority Leader Nancy) Pelosi's whip,"
and willing to sign on to his agenda, he would have received the
Indian super PAC's support.
That agenda, according to several Indian American publications,
includes securing a visa for the man Kumar has called his "idol,"
Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist and leading candidate for prime
minister in India's upcoming elections.
Barred from U.S.
Modi is one of India's most prominent and polarizing politicians. In
2005, the State Department barred him from entering the U.S. because
of alleged human rights and religious rights violations in his home
state of Gujarat, stemming from riots in 2002 in which nearly 1,000
Muslims were killed. Modi, who was Gujarat's head of state, has denied
wrongdoing.
Singh said she has received no money and "no promises" from Kumar or
his super PAC, which can spend unlimited amounts as long as it doesn't
coordinate directly with the candidate.
"I'm not part of his project per se," and Kumar's agenda "is not
mine," Singh said. Her campaign, she said, "will only happen on my
terms. ... He gets credit for initiating the interest, but beyond
that, it's all me."
Singh says she raised $100,000 in the five days after declaring her
candidacy, including $25,000 of her own money. The rest, she said,
came from about "20 family and friends."
Kumar's tactics
Raja Swamy, spokesman for the Coalition Against Genocide, a human
rights group in Washington, D.C., said Kumar was recently reprimanded
by GOP officials after his Indian policy group used the House of
Representatives seal to suggest its endorsement of a Capitol Hill
event he sponsored in support of Modi.
Kumar's super PAC could alter the dynamics of the South Bay race,
should he choose to back Singh financially. In 2002, the super PAC
spent $500,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Rep. Tammy
Duckworth, D-Ill., including producing an ad set to Middle Eastern
music that showed the double amputee Iraq war veteran wearing a
headscarf during a visit to a local Muslim community center.
The Republican candidate that year was a Tea Party favorite, Joe
Walsh. This year, Kumar is backing another candidate to oust Duckworth
- an Indian American health care executive, Manju Goel.
'No stake' here
"Mr. Kumar really has no stake in California, and I'm pretty sure he
really doesn't give a hoot about what California wants" in a
congressional candidate, Swamy said. "He's interested in amassing
support for Modi."
Pressed about her views regarding the denial of Modi's visa, Singh
said the U.S. should "take another look" at the decision. "It would be
regretful if certain groups that have certain agendas would make the
policy for the United States," Singh said. "U.S. policy came about
because people pressured them."
Her position stands in contrast to Honda and Khanna - and to Rep. Ami
Bera, D-Elk Grove (Sacramento County), the only Indian American member
of the House - who have said there is no reason to change the State
Department's ruling.
Muslims' concerns
Singh's links to Kumar raise alarms for Khalid Azam, a member of the
American Indian Muslim Council and longtime resident of the district,
home to one of the highest concentrations of South Asians in the
nation.
"It is definitively a matter of great concern for the South Asian
community - the Muslim community and the entire Indian community,"
Azam said.
Singh's candidacy is "even more alarming," he said, because of her
activism with the Hindu American Foundation - a group whose more
fundamentalist factions back a Hindu supremacist movement in India.
The foundation has denied any connection to Hindu nationalist
movements, and Singh said her connection to the group consisted of
volunteer work intended to strengthen her family's connection to her
native country.
Singh says her chief interest in running for Congress is to undo
President Obama's Affordable Care Act. As a doctor at Stanford, she
says, she has seen the law's detrimental effects on patients, medical
professionals and small businesses.
On social issues, Singh says she favors abortion rights and same-sex
marriage rights. But she has not been politically active.
Missed elections
Alameda County registrar's records show Singh has voted in just five
elections since 2002, when she registered to vote for the first time
at age 31.
Singh said her schedules as a medical student, and later as a doctor
and a mother of two, were often to blame for her voting lapses. When
she did vote, she said, she always followed the Republican line.
"Decline to state doesn't mean you're not" a Republican, she said. "It
never even occurred to me that I wasn't" a registered Republican until
she was preparing to file for the congressional race, she said, and
"thought I'd better check."
Allen Hoffenblum, publisher of the California Target Book, which
tracks congressional races, said that "the only reason for someone to
invest in that (race) would be to siphon votes away from Khanna,"
Honda's Indian American challenger.
"There's no way a Republican can win that seat," in a district with
barely 20 percent GOP registration, he said. "Games are being played -
but the motivation is purely speculation."
Carla Marinucci is the senior political writer at The San Francisco
Chronicle. E-mail:cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cmarinucci
sent from samsung galaxy note, so please excuse brevity
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