New York: Entrepreneur-turned-politician and Democrat Shri Thanedar became the first Indian and American from the state of Michigan.
In today’s election, Thanedar got 84,096 votes while Martell Bivings got 27,366 votes.
Before the Thanedar, Dr Ami Bera, Raja Krishnamurthy, Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal have been elected to the Congress and all four are likely to be re-elected to the next Congress.
The 67-year-old policeman, who was born in Belgaum, Karnataka, defeated a Republican opponent in Detroit, Michigan. The policeman, who is now a Michigan state legislator, unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor in 2018. He came to the US in 1979 and did his PhD and MBA in Chemistry.
He further started a chemical testing laboratory of Avolome Analytical Services. He sold a majority stake in it in 2016 and retired to join public service on a “call to fight for social, racial and economic justice” according to his campaign bio.
The Thanadar,running in a constituency that covers a part of a city that is heavily African-American, stressed that he grew up in poverty in a family of 10 people in India and worked in several jobs to support his family after his father retired.
“I will never forget what it’s like to live in poverty, and I’ll never stop working to get Detroit families out of it,” he wrote on his campaign site. Thanadar will be the seventh Indian-American to be elected to the House.