Harry Arora, an Indian-American engineer-turned-entrepreneur is hopeful of reversing the 2008 Obama wave to take back a Congressional district in Connecticut from the Democrats to the Republican party and be the first from the community from the East Coast in the next Congress.
If elected to the Congress in the November 6 mid-term elections, the Baroda-born Sikh promises to be a "tireless advocate" of the Indo-US relationship and strongly push for doing away with per country quota for Green Card, which has resulted in an agonising wait for hundreds and thousands of Indian professionals in the US.
The tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has one of the largest population of Indian-Americans in the US, but so far there has been no representation of the community in the Congress.
Arora said he hopes and is confident to break that, by winning back the Democratic seat for his Republican party.
"The reality is that numbers are quite favourable (for the Republicans this mid-term). They are not quite unfavourable as one would think was in 2010 or 2014, when the results were decided only by five points," Arora, who is seeking to enter the US House of Representatives from the fourth Congressional District of Connecticut, told PTI in an interview.
Trump's popularity, anti-incumbancy against the current occupant Congressman Jim Hames, who snatched the seat from the Republicans in 2008 riding a Obama wave, mismanagement of Connecticut by the Democratic party at the State level, and his own door-to-door campaign all clubbed together gives him the optimism, said Arora, who came to the US as a graduate student 25 years ago to do MBA.
"There is a huge amount of disenchantment or disapproval of the current Democratic leadership at the state level," he said.
"As a result, we do believe that electorates are ready for a change," said a confident Arora, who like President Donald Trump is self-financing a large part of his campaign.
He lived in West Bengal and Mathura before competing his electrical electronics engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering. For the past two decades he has been in the finance sector where he established himself as a successful entrepreneur. His grandparents moved to India from Rawalpindi after the partition in 1947.
A Punjabi, Arora became a US citizen in 2004. It was two years ago, when he fought and survived cancer and decided to devote the rest of his life to public service.
Driven by the Sikhism faith, he said it was personally a call to action.
"Being an entrepreneur, I thought the most important thing was to get the mandate from the people to be able to contribution and participate in the whole process," he said.
As such it is about a year ago that he decided to run for the US House of Representatives from the fourth Congressional District of Connecticut, which has a mixed record of going either way. For the last decade, the seat has been with Hames with the Democratic Party.
Political pundits say Hames, 52, is mostly likely to be re-elected.
Arora, who is self-funding a large part of his campaign, does not believe so. He argues that in the Trump era he has a much greater chance of swinging the seat for his Republican party.
For two decades, until 2008, the fourth Congressional District of Connecticut was represented by a Republican. "The fourth District where I am running from has a huge possibility and is favourable to change," Arora said.
"My underlying platform is bringing new ideas, new energy and problem solving to our societal problem. That's my intense focus," he said.
Describing himself a Republican by philosophy Arora really believes that family and religion is important to him.
"I really do believe that we need to make sure that we have a good discipline. I also believe in him like more competitive economy because when I grew up in India that the whole process of liberalisation had not happened," he said, adding that excessive government control and red tape is not beneficial.
"What is required is a healthy regulation. When government starts controlling and doing more things, inefficiency and corruption sets in," he said.
Noting that this issue is shaped by local issues, Arora said that overall improvement of the economy under the Trump administration will have a positive impact on the Republican party on November 6.
Responding to a question, Arora argued that the H-1B visas have a huge amount of relevance.
"What is okay is when it is used to attract strong, very well educated, sharp talent from all around the world, which America needs. And frankly speaking, that's the best part of our immigration process," Arora said as he argued for doing away with the 7 per cent per country Green Card quota, which he said is not doing justice to the talented Indian professionals in the US who are waiting for decades to get legal permanent residency.
"India is a country of a billion people. There are other countries which may have 5 million people. The same (Green Card) quota cannot be applied. Somebody has to advocate for that. I want to make sure that I stand, bring these ideas up front," Arora said.
Now that Indian Americans have made their mark in every segment of the United States, Arora said it is time that the community made more participation in the political system here.
"That's why, I believe it's time for me to be elected," Arora said.
