WASHINGTON: An overwhelming 81% Indian-Americans will vote for Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama while merely 19% will support
the Republican nominee Senator John McCain, an opinion poll suggests.
During an informal opinion poll of Indian-Americans US citizens, carried out by a non-partisan, non-profit organization based in Washington -- Bridging Nations, 81% of respondents said they would vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden, while only 19% said they would vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin.
Of the 40% of the respondents who were registered as Independents, 67% said they would vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden while others were planning to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin, showing that the vast majority of crucial independent voters support the Illinois Senator.
The overwhelming support for Senator Obama amongst Indian Americans was corroborated by the National Asian American Survey (NAAS), published on October 6, showed that 62% of Indian-American respondents chose to vote for Obama and Biden, while only 12% were for McCain and 25% were undecided.
The Indian-American community has grown from 1.6 million people in 2000 to over 2.3 million in 2005, according to the US Census Bureau - a growth rate of 38%, one of the highest amongst US Ethnic Populations.
The prospect of an Indian-American figuring in the Presidential elections
appeared briefly when Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's name surfaced as a possible running mate to Senator McCain.
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WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama
is getting down to business in a hurry, sounding out a close aide from Chicago for the pivotal position
of White House Chief of Staff even as political salons in the capital are working themselves into a lather speculating about names for other cabinet positions. ( Watch )
Barely 24 hours after his resounding victory, Obama has named former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta to head his transition team while zeroing in on his close friend, Congressman Rahm Emanuel for a position that's often described as the second most powerful job in Washington. The White House Chief of Staff is both secretary and gatekeeper to the President, a COO to an administration where the President is the CEO.
Both appointments carry the risk of showing Obama leaning on Washington insiders to kick-start his administration, since Podesta and Emanuel are old hands in the capital and former Clinton aides. But the speed with which the President-elect has moved has partly overcome that charge. Typically, new presidents dawdle over key appointments, taking weeks and even months to make the call (as was the case with Bill Clinton), but Obama appears to have readied the names even before victory.
The transition team's advisory board has one notable Indian-American, Google's Sonal Shah. A former Goldman Sachs executive, Shah heads Google's philanthropic arm and will be on leave from the company till January 20, when Obama will formally take office.
Vice President-elect Joe Biden's confidantes Mark Gitenstein and Ted Kaufman will serve as co-chairs of the transition team. Other members of the transition team include Obama's friend and senior campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett; and Pete Rouse, Obama's former Senate chief of staff and top campaign aide.
The advisory board mostly includes allies and confidantes of Obama, Biden, and the Clintons, notable among them being former Commerce Secretary William Daley and Obama's National Security Adviser Susan Rice -- who is also tipped to be the formal NSA in the Obama White House – who have both dealt with India.
In fact, Washington is in a tizzy over other possible cabinet-level appointments, most of them product of guesswork rather than any insider knowledge. Because Obama has said he will have Republicans in his administration, the expectation is that one of the two key cabinet principals -- Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense -- will be from the opposition.
The incumbent Defense Secretary Robert Gates favored to retain his position since he is widely acknowledged to have done a good job and also to have a sense of continuity for the moment as Obama seeks ways to disengage from Iraq and shift attention to the Pakistan-Afghanistan theater. Other Republicans being mentioned for cabinet level appointments include Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel (for defense) or Indiana Senator Robert Lugar (for State).
But there are a number of senior Democratic Party veterans being mentioned for these posts too, including Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and
New Mexico governor Bill Richardson (for Secretary of State). Anthony Lake, Richard Holbrooke, and Strobe Talbott are among the names doing the rounds too.
As if there aren't enough heavyweights in contention, a new website www.draftfareed.org has popped up, pushing the Indian-American commentator and Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria for the Secretary of State. During the election campaign, Obama was spotted reading Zakaria's book "The Post-American World," but it is unlikely that the President-elect, who was already under the gun from conservatives for his Muslim middle name, will pick a Muslim for the post, although Zakaria's identity transcends religion.
However, it is the post of Treasure Secretary that is expected to get Obama's immediate attention given the financial crisis roiling the US and the world. The possible list includes Timothy Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Lawrence Summers, who was Treasury secretary at the end of the Clinton administration and has been a close adviser to Obama on the economy, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
The new president will be making more than 3000 appointments in the Democratic makeover of Washington DC, and the process typically takes weeks and even months, since many of the jobs require security clearance and Senate confirmation.
Several Indian-Americans are expected to be part of the new dispensation, in a continuation of the political strides they have made during the Clinton and Bush years (when there were three Indian-Americans at the assistant secretary level). Among those tipped to be part of the Obama administration is former New York Solicitor General Preeta Bansal, who worked as a senior advisor in the Obama campaign, who is said to be in line for a job at the Justice Department.
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