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Sikh Political Engagement Surges in Presidential Elections

- Anju Kaur | Editor, SikhNN

Sikhs have doubled their political activity in presidential races over the last election and their longtime affinity for Republicans seems to have been broken by hard work on the part of Hillary Clinton and the message of change of Barack Obama.

According to data from the Federal Election Commission, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., led in Sikh contributions, receiving almost $248,000 through Jan. 31. That’s more than half of the total $412,000 from 241 donors.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was next with about $64,000. And among Republicans, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson led with $24,400.

Because campaigns are not required to collect religious affiliation information, the data of more than 1.1 million records were filtered to find names containing ‘Singh’ and ‘Kaur’, and searched for 242 common Sikh surnames with typical Sikh first names.

Although the method is not perfect, the results show vivid trends in Sikh political engagement.

While Sikhs gave slightly more to President Bush than Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in the last election, the contributions to Democratic candidates have surged this time. Clinton has already raised more than the total $217,500 that Sikhs gave to all candidates in the entire 2004 presidential election cycle.

The former First Lady has always had wide support among Sikhs who identify her with the economic prosperity the community enjoyed under President Clinton’s administration.

In the Washington D.C. area, one of the largest concentrations of Sikhs, Clinton has appeared at several events and fundraisers organized by Maryland dentist Rajwant Singh, head of the Sikh Council on Religion and Education.

His first fundraiser for Clinton was in February 2006 for her Senate re-election. In June, he donated a total of $4,600 to her presidential campaign, $2,300 for the primary and $2,300 for the general election, the maximum allowed by the election commission. And when her campaign called and asked him to join, he began volunteering by making phone calls and sending emails. He is now campaigning for the March 4 primaries in Ohio and Texas.

“She and her husband have always been pro Sikh-community. Anytime (we) asked for help, they have been there,” Rajwant Singh said. “We need to participate in the political process, it’s good for Sikhs and good for the country. In terms of the size and affluence of our community, we are not doing enough.”

On Election Day, Feb. 12, Rajwant Singh sent an email to his “Democratic friends” asking for votes. The email referred to Clinton’s address at a Capitol Hill event in December 2001 in memory of hate-crime victim Balbir Singh Sodhi of Mesa, Ariz., who was killed shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

And a photo of Clinton from a 2005 Sikh American heritage dinner was also included along with links to letters from the Clintons congratulating the community on various Gurpurabs (religious occasions).

But despite strong Sikh financial support, Obama beat Clinton by 25 to 50 points in the Chesapeake primary.

Campaign reports show that although Obama, a relative newcomer for the Sikh community, received far less than Clinton, he did raise twice as much as other long-time political friends, Thompson and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, combined.

And his message of change has struck a chord with many Sikhs around the country, including Ravinder Singh Bhalla.

A New Jersey attorney, Ravinder Singh is serving as one of a thousand policy advisors on the senator’s government-reform subcommittee. He joined the campaign at the request of Mark Alexander, Obama’s national policy advisor. The two had met while campaigning for Newark Mayor Cory Booker in 2006.

Ravinder Singh said he met Obama and was impressed by his knowledge of international human rights issues.

“On most issues, his policy is in line with my beliefs,” said Ravinder Singh, who has worked with Sikh clients in civil rights and hate-crime cases.

Clinton’s willingness to consistently help the Sikh community is questionable, he added. Many Obama supporters have expressed concern about her lack of support on the issue of mandatory turban pat-downs at airports.

When the Transportation Safety Administration changed airport security procedures regarding head coverings in August, four senators signed onto a letter to Assistant Secretary Kip Hawley, asking for justification for the new policy. Clinton was not one of them, Obama was.

“It’s unfair to assume that Sen. Clinton refused to sign the letter,” said Christina Angarola, spokeswoman for Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Durbin initiated the letter at the request of the Sikh Coalition, a New York-based advocacy group. And because he had only a week to prepare and send the letter, he approached only 10 senators and received the four signatures in time. Clinton may not have known about the letter and Obama often writes letters with Durbin, Angarola said.

Still, Ravinder Singh was impressed with Obama’s support.

“He (Obama) never asked for money from the community,” he said. “But when the Sikh community needed support he did so without hesitation.”

Ravinder Singh began fundraising and canvassing, going door-to-door asking for votes, in Iowa, New Hampshire and New Jersey. He and three others also formed a group called ‘Sikhs for Obama’ on the campaign’s Web site, which has 100 members, he said. And he plans to do phone banking, asking for votes by phone, for the Texas primary.

“Fundraising is one of a number of means by which to contribute and support a campaign and draw attention to the community,” he said. Any engagement is good, no matter which party, or who wins.

Valarie Kaur, another Obama supporter, has traveled to Texas to canvass in the Austin area.

“It’s time to see ourselves in the American story and join,” said Kaur, a California native.

Kaur said she found her voice in Obama when she heard him speak at a rally. She had felt voiceless since August 2004 when New York City police arrested her along with thousands of people protesting the Iraq war at the Republican National Convention.

Kaur was there as a legal observer, but was swept up in the raid, detained and later released. Her lawsuit against the New York Police Department for physical injury and wrongful arrest is still pending.

As a third-generation Sikh American, Kaur sees Obama as her best hope to change the political climate for all Americans. But perhaps her greatest personal accomplishment was realized when she convinced her life-long Republican father to become a Democrat and an Obama supporter, she said.

Kaur’s father may be an anomaly among Sikh Republicans. Many of his generation, traditionally Republican, said they would remain loyal to their party’s candidate.

According to campaign finance data, 49 Sikhs gave a total of more than $70,000 to GOP candidates. After Thompson, Sikhs gave $17,275 to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and $13,600 to Richardson.

Gurdev Singh of Wisconsin, who made his first-time contribution of $2,300 to Thompson, said he would vote for McCain in the general election. He had donated to Thompson at the request of Darshan Singh Dhaliwal, a successful oil businessman and long-time supporter.

Darshan Singh, a resident of Wisconsin since 1972, plans to vote for McCain in the general election because he is “a wonderful person” and because “Republicans are good for India,” he said.

Didar Singh Bains, one of the richest farmers of northern California who immigrated to there about 50 years ago, gave $500 to Giuliani. A long-time Republican, he has contributed to both parties, but said he would vote for McCain because he is the best candidate.

Kenneth Cole Ad Delights Sikhs and Goes National

- Anju Kaur

New York fashion designer Kenneth Cole is going national with his new Spring 2008 ad campaign featuring Sandeep Singh Caberwal, who will also begin writing Monday on the company’s new blog.

“It is a good opportunity for the Sikh people,” Sandeep Singh said. “There is no positive portrayal of the Sikh identity in the media, not something younger children can relate to.”

When a floor-to-ceiling poster of Sandeep’s glamour shot, dressed in Kenneth Cole clothes and shades, appeared in the window of the Rockefeller Center store last month, it caught the eye of many New York Sikhs and created a buzz in the online community.

The company then launched a video ad and interviews on its Web site, and released an ad insert in the New York Times, all in the past week.

“There was an impressive reaction on the Sikhchic and Sikhnet blogs,” said Meredith Paley, a vice president of public affairs at Kenneth Cole.

“Amazing,” “cool,” “awesome,” and “proud” were among the overwhelmingly positive comments on the two blogs. A few squabbled about Sandeep using ‘Sonny’ as his first-name, his pronunciation of Sikh as ‘seek’ and the size of his fifty. But most were happy with the ad and commended Kenneth Cole for using a Sikh.

“I was grateful to have the opportunity,” Sandeep Singh said. And he was especially delighted that the company was looking for a sardar.

Last fall, a well-known casting agent, Jennifer Starr, contacted Amardeep Singh of the Sikh Coalition, looking for a Sikh man for Kenneth Cole’s spring ad campaign. Amardeep Singh made a request for candidates on the Coalition’s New York City listserv and the Coalition’s interns also sent out a request on Facebook.

“The funny thing was that Jennifer got so many e-mails in response from sardars attaching their pictures that her e-mail account got overloaded,” Amardeep said by email. “Her co-worker actually had to call me the next day to say, "Please tell people to stop e-mailing."

“I find that so funny and indicative of the thirst out there for Sikhs to be portrayed positively in the mainstream media,” he added.

Sandeep described the experience as “amazing.” He spent two days in October doing photo shoots and recording videos. He interacted with some of the other people selected as models for the ad campaign and met about 20 people from Kenneth Cole.

“The company feels very strong about the campaign,” he said. They were very respectful, unassuming and sensitive. “They chose people who would challenge stereotypes.”

Kenneth Cole has been known to turn heads with his ads that focus on causes, such as AIDS, and talk about them when no one else would, Paley said. But this time he wanted to celebrate diversity by choosing “bold, unexpected people of substance” to mark the 25th anniversary of the multi-billion-dollar fashion company.

The video ad also includes a quadriplegic rugby player, a Paralympic athlete with prosthetic legs and a singer with body tattoos. The ad campaign has a total of 11 models.

“We came up with the types of people,” Paley said. “By being an aware person, he (Cole) is aware of the of the Sikh community and the controversies, especially after 9/11.”

Print media and billboards will also carry the new ad.

“It will be breaking in the next week or two in magazines like Vanity Fair, Marie Claire and In Style,” Paley said. Each magazine will have a different insert.

According to a Kenneth Cole press release, the ad will also appear in New York City on the Houston Street mural and the West Side Highway billboard.

A 2004 graduate of Georgetown Law Center in Washington D.C., Sandeep Singh took a break from working at a Rockefeller Center law firm two years later to start a premium tea lounge in New York City. He married six months ago and moved to San Francisco, a city both he and his wife loved, and is working as a small business consultant.

When his brother-in-law forwarded him the Sikh Coalition email about Kenneth Cole looking for a Sikh to appear in its ad, the 28-year-old sent in his photograph. But he did not do it for vanity.

There are many challenges for Sikhs in America, especially children, for whom bullying can lead them to question their identity, Sandeep Singh said. But having a positive image like this show kids that good things can come from keeping your faith and identity.

“(The ad) is an example of what can happen,” he said. “There are opportunities across the board for people with their identity.”

Sandeep Singh said he has received a lot of feedback from children and college students thanking him for doing the ad, which has been very rewarding.

“It helps make life easier for them,” Sandeep Singh said. “It allows them to feel even more proud about themselves, that they can do that too.”

Sandeep talked to a lot of people from Kenneth Cole during his brief modeling stint. They don’t realize what a dramatic impact this ad is going to have for not only the Sikh community but also the entire South Asian community, he said.

“I’m not making claims of being a role model,” he added. “I am proud of Sikh traditions and Sikh history, and proud to carry them into the future.”

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