In the face of all of these obstacles, this minority group’s participation in the political process has manifested itself in Georgia, albeit less successfully, prior to the campaign of Congresswoman Majette. In order to understand the advances made by the Indian-American community in exercising its influence in this election, earlier work and past approaches to politics in Georgia need to be examined. Financial contributions in Georgia put forth by Indian-American donors demonstrate a well-intended form of political participation that did not have positive results due to a lack of political strategy or awareness of the effects. Funds from Indian-American community members for Georgia campaigns, prior to the turn of the century, went to members of the Georgia Congressional delegation without regards to their stance on issues important to the community. Narender Reddy, head of Indian American Forum for Political Education, remarks that “at one time, out of the eleven member Congressional delegation from Georgia, eight were consistently voting against Indian-American and India’s interests,” adding that many prominent Indian-American donors contributed to the same Congressmen that voted against the minority community’s interests (Parekh, 2002). Thus, the larger part of the Georgia Congressional delegation received monetary support from Indian-Americans with no reason to be held accountable to their interests since the contributors did not do so themselves. Disunity among Indian-American support in Georgia also plagued the community; such support has been described as that coming from “a handful of concerned individuals doing what they could in their individual capacities” rather than a united front or a cooperative venture (Contractor and Parekh, 2002). Such disunity hindered the ability to mobilize voters or volunteers behind any one candidate or representative. Consequently, although these efforts were being made by the newly political Georgia Indian-American community, changes still needed to occur before the group matured into a politically potent force.
The Indian-American community also implemented some successful actions and developed positive trends prior to Congresswoman Majette’s campaign, which fed into the success of this particular venture into Georgia politics, further amplified by its victory. Due to a lack of a proper model to follow for themselves, Indian-Americans have frequently turned to the Jewish-American lobby for guidance as well as for support in political issues. At a national level, leaders of Indian-American communities have come together with Jewish organization leaders to collaborate on different projects and issues (Fingerhut, 2002). Beginning with foreign policy – with the relationship of support over this particular issue strengthened ever since the terrorist attacks of September 11th – the Indian-American and Jewish interest groups have grown closer and many Indian-Americans have benefited from the experiences and interactions with Jewish political organizations such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The AJC’s support has even extended as far as providing training sessions for grass-roots efforts by Indian-Americans in recent years. Kumar P. Barve, majority leader of the House of Delegates, suggests that “Indian-Americans see the American Jewish community as a yardstick against which to compare themselves” (Cooperman, 2003). The Indian-American community in Georgia and in the Fourth District also extended their connections to the Jewish community, fostering a greater level of success in Majette’s election. Another key feature of Indian-American politics in Georgia prior to the Fourth District election is the emergence of various structured interest groups and organizations to empower the minority community in political endeavors. Organizations such as IAFPE and the Georgia Indo American Chamber of Commerce (GIACC) complement and feed off of national organizations such as the Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA) and the National Federation of Indian-American Associations (NFIA). These groups demonstrate the emerging presence of a unified Indian-American response, both on the national level and the state and local levels in Georgia, meant to combat the fledgling disunity of the group and seeking to educate and align communities to support common interests (Parekh, 2002). These qualities of Indian-American political participation in Georgia were built upon and reinforced to bring about the success of Indian-American interests and Congresswoman Denise Majette in the 2002 elections.
The contest between Denise Majette, a local African-American judge, and Cynthia
McKinney, the incumbent who possessed anti-India views, began to play out among
these conditions in the Indian-American community which makes up a small yet
significant part of the Georgia fourth district’s constituency. Both of
these African-American women competed in a black-majority district based in
DeKalb County, where African-Americans make up 50.2 percent of the voting age
citizenry and the district is considered safely Democratic. Thus, the true contest
remained in the Democratic primary; Denise Majette, having won the primary election,
continued to beat the Republican candidate Cynthia Van Auken with seventy-seven
percent of the vote (Barone, 2003). Former Congresswoman McKinney antagonized
Indian-American interests, despite appeals to the contrary by community leaders,
and thus prominent Indian-Americans of the fourth district were spurred on to
communicate with then Judge Majette. After ascertaining that Majette would indeed
support Indian-American interests in Congress and would be open to communication
concerning such interests, the grass-roots efforts by Indian-Americans moved
to support her with as much strength as it could muster. Early support through
fundraising, volunteering, and other visible means of aid came from this minority
community. This support preceded the arrival of other interest groups and contributors
to the scene, including the Jewish groups backing Majette and Arab and Muslim
groups backing McKinney (Rajghatta, 2002). With the help of a crossover Republican
vote in the primary (Desijournal, 2002), Majette succeeded in securing 58.3
percent of the vote, McKinney only receiving 41.7 percent (Barone, 2003). Indian-Americans
in the end succeeded in raising twenty thousand dollars for Majette’s
primary election (Rajan, 2002) and around sixty thousand dollars for the entire
election (Parekh, 2002). Through each step of the process, the Indian-American
community demonstrated advances in their approach to campaigns and political
involvement that community leaders hope to use as a model for future grassroots
campaigns in Georgia and the rest of the South where significantly large Indian-American
populations exist.
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