Swati Joshi, a 60-year-old Democratic voter from Dallas, says she would like to have a president who shares her grandmother’s name: Kamala.
As voters rejoice over President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race on Sunday, Joshi is part of a growing Asian American electorate now turning its attention to what a Kamala Harris presidency would mean for the country — and for them.
Joshi, who is of Indian descent, said she supported Harris and hoped the country was on the verge of a historic first. “I think this is a big step not only for women but also for South Asians,” she said.
Asian American voters say they are excited about the prospect of someone of their heritage leading the country. But they also have some reservations.
Before he stepped down, Biden was losing ground among Asian American voters: From 2020 to 2024, he lost 8 points in that demographic.
Questions remain about Harris’ performance given her low approval ratings, whether donors who abandoned Biden will return to fund her campaign and her ability to attract black and Latino voters, whom Biden has also lost touch with.
If Harris is elected as the Democratic nominee, she will be the first Black woman and the first South Asian American to lead a major party presidential ticket. And if elected, Harris will be the first woman, the first South Asian American and the first Black woman to hold the nation’s highest office.
Others still wonder whether the United States is ready to elect a woman of color to the White House.
With Biden’s allies now rallying behind her and major Asian American groups throwing their support behind her, pundits say the nomination “is hers to lose.”
Sara Sadhwani, a senior researcher at the civic research organization AAPI Data, said that while Harris’ candidacy comes at a time of chaos, it is nonetheless a “monumental moment.”
“This is absolutely historic, not just for the Asian American community, but for the future multiracial America that we are moving toward,” Sadhwani said.
According to a July poll of Asian American voters, 44% of Asian Americans have a favorable impression of Harris, compared to 34% for former President Donald Trump.
An NBC News poll showed she had a similar rating among the general population, with 45 percent approval. She is two points behind Trump, which is within the margin of error, according to the poll.
Asian American support for Harris has declined slightly over the past two years.
Can Harris conquer Asian America?
Harris’s likely rise to the Democratic nomination coincides with an increasingly politicized Asian America, catalyzed by Trump’s presidency and the rise of anti-Asian hate amid the COVID pandemic, Sadhwani said. And Harris is likely to mobilize and capitalize on that demographic, she said.
Harris’ biracial history was a major talking point during her previous campaigns for California state attorney general and president, as well as during her tenure as vice president.
The Asian American population has more than doubled in the past 20 years, according to census data, and the electorate has grown significantly. According to a Pew Research Center report, 62% of Asian voters favor the Democratic Party. Their numbers cannot be underestimated, especially in purple states, many experts say.
“The increase in AAPI turnout between 2016 and 2020 explains Biden’s margin of victory,” Tom Bonier, CEO of Democratic political data analytics firm TargetSmart, told NBC News in August.
Neither Biden’s nor Harris’s team responded to a request for comment.
Harris’s background allows her to rally a broad coalition of multiracial voters in a way that other candidates can’t, said Pawan Dhingra, a professor of American studies at Amherst College. Her age, race and gender make her an even greater antithesis to Trump.
“Her biography really helps us understand what a multiracial coalition of Americans can become,” he said. “It can help rethink the history of Indians and Asian Americans.”
Since her first run for president in 2020, Kamala Harris has been vocal about her Indian-American identity. She often talks about her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, who immigrated to the United States at age 19 and met her father while she was a civil rights protester in the 1960s.
Her maternal grandfather, who was active in the Indian independence movement against British colonisation, was one of her earliest political inspirations, she said.
“My mother, when she came to the United States, automatically, given who my grandfather was and the struggle for Indian independence … marched in the streets for civil rights, wearing her sari,” Harris said at a conference in May hosted by the Asian American Institute for Congressional Studies. “That’s how she met my father. And that had a profound influence.”
Its roots tell a story not only of Asian American success in the United States, Dhingra said, but also of Asian Americans working with other minority groups to create change. In the coming months, he hopes it will draw on those sentiments and speak to the power of unity.
Suresh Kalyanaraman, a 55-year-old Indian immigrant, came to the United States in 1990. The Virginia resident first became interested in American politics during former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and has voted blue ever since. But he says he’s rediscovered his enthusiasm this time around because he believes democracy is at stake.
Kalyanaraman said he likes Harris and will support her, but he wants Democrats to weigh their options and give potential candidates a chance to debate. As a technologist, he wants a president who respects science, education, health care and the environment.
“That’s exactly what we all felt when Barack Obama won in 2008,” he said. “We all believe that our sons and daughters can all become presidents of the United States one day.”
This is an election that many in the community consider one of the most important of their lives.
“Many Asian Americans have told me that they got involved in politics — they left their day jobs as engineers, stay-at-home moms, tech professionals — after Donald Trump was elected because they felt a need … as Americans to get involved and make sure their communities knew what was at stake,” Sadhwani said.
The campaign will be an uphill battle
While Harris is poised for a historic campaign, she won’t be without her own challenges. Sadhwani noted that the vice president has struggled to gain traction under the Biden administration.
Alexis Lee, a 26-year-old Korean-American who votes in New Jersey, echoes that sentiment. She said she was at church when she heard the news of Biden’s withdrawal from the race and realized she needed to learn about Harris’ record while in office.
“A lot of my friends were wondering, ‘What has she done in the last two years as vice president?'” Lee said.
Lee said she hopes the campaign will address her concerns, including about Harris’ past as a prosecutor and her positions on climate change and immigration. Lee said she remains optimistic, however, given Harris’ record on abortion rights.
It also remains to be seen whether donors and voters who turned away from Biden will return to Harris with the same enthusiasm, Dhingra said.
“They may want to rally behind her just to shut down the debate and move forward against Trump. But that doesn’t mean they’re really enthusiastic about her,” he said.
Early signs, however, indicate that donors are returning, with tens of millions of dollars in grassroots donations pouring in since the news broke, according to online donation processor ActBlue.
Harris’s team is already drawing on her years as a prosecutor, which contrasts her with Trump, who is a convicted felon. But some young progressives active in social justice circles are critical of her tough-on-crime record as San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general.
During her first presidential campaign in 2019, Harris said her knowledge of the criminal justice system, both inside and out, would ultimately help her dismantle mass incarceration.
“I became a prosecutor because I wanted to make sure communities were safe, and also because I wanted to reform a system that I knew was broken and often influenced by racial bias,” she said in a 2019 interview with MSNBC’s Al Sharpton.
Harris has been a vocal supporter of abortion access, particularly since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. She visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota earlier this year, believed to be the first president or vice president to do so. It’s an issue that could help rally women voters to Harris, Dhingra said.
Joshi, a resident of Texas, where abortion is virtually illegal, believes Harris is the ideal person to speak to worried women who face restrictive laws. But Joshi also worries that a broader American electorate will have a hard time accepting her.
“There is still a lot of misogyny and racism,” she said.
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