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The 30-something son of Indian migrants seeking to enter the US Congress.
New York, Jul 25 (EFE) .- A new generation of progressive politicians, who say they share similar experiences with ordinary people, is emerging in places like New York, personified in the Democratic candidate for the congressional primaries, Suraj Patel , a thirtysomething son of Indian immigrants. “I’m the only one in this (Democratic) race who has the experience of an immigrant, of being the first generation of his family born in the United States, who has had to work hard to run a business, fight foreclosures… I think those are the types of experiences that people need in a congressman today,” the lawyer and businessman told Efe. But to start his race in Congress, he will have to win the first Democrats on August 23 and dethrone Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler, two career politicians who have together accumulated sixty years of presence in the Lower House. HUMBLE CHILDHOOD Patel, 38, says that his parents came to the United States in the 1960s with “not a dollar in their pockets” and that before his father got a job as an engineer with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority ( MTA) in New York worked as a security guard, among many other jobs. “My uncle was fired for delivering pizzas backwards. They did everything from working in warehouses to night shifts,” he recalls and notes that during that time the whole family, “great-grandparents, grandparents, parents and siblings,” slept together in soil. Patel, who studied at the prestigious universities of Stanford, Cambridge and New York University, says that this humble origin helps him connect with Latino voters, which are reflected in his own history. He also points out that many assume he is Latino or Hispanic rather than Indian and that he often speaks to them in Spanish. He learned Spanish after studying in the capital of Argentina and the Spanish city of Salamanca. DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN DEMOCRATS The candidate assures that one of the things that will help him connect with voters from ethnic minorities is the fact that he has suffered, like them, discrimination from within the Democratic ranks. His rival Maloney once said: “Well, Suraj Patel, he collects a lot of his money from Indian people who have his last name”, to which he defends himself by saying that it is a very common name (300,000 Patels in the United States), but Actually “it’s a way of saying: ‘He’s not one of us,'” notes the politician, who wears a pin with the United States flag on his lapel. ONE DAVID AGAINST TWO GOLIATHS In order for Patel to become the first American Indian from New York in Congress, he will first have to beat Congressmen Maloney and Nadler, and then, in November, Republican Mike Zumbluskas, but this latest dispute, if it were to happen, it would be easier, since in the city the Democrats traditionally win. Against Maloney, who has represented New York in Congress since 1993, he has run twice in 2018 and then in 2020, and on that last occasion he lost by less than four percentage points. For his part, Nadler, who has also been a congressman for three decades, joined the race after New York redrew the state’s electoral map, affecting the lines of District 10 -where he has won since 2013- and 12, between others. Both Maloney and Jerrold, who are 76 and 75 years old, respectively, have pointed out Patel’s lack of experience, since his political career is summed up in having worked in the two presidential campaigns of President Barack Obama and later as an associate in his “team advance of the White House”. But on the “experience”, Patel defends himself: “If you have experience in a system that does not work, then it is a bad experience (…) There is one thing clear in this country, people are looking for something new, they are looking for a change, they don’t want more of the status quo,” notes the candidate. OCASIO-CORTEZ LEADED THE WAY According to Patel, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is 32 years old and has represented New York’s 14th District since 2019, is also part of this new generation of Democrats. “That is the kind of activist leader that is needed. It may not be the same policies, but it is the same energy that people deserve from their representative to fight for them,” says the candidate, who is also a professor of business ethics at New York University. In this sense, the candidate highlighted that the Latin politician who became the youngest woman in history to be elected to Congress uses both her social networks and “her power of persuasion” to denounce corruption in Washington and try to generate changes. Sarah Yáñez-Richards (c) Agencia EFE
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