Sri Preston Kulkarni is the Democratic candidate in Texas’s 22nd congressional district. TX22 is a very diverse district, with 100 languages spoken. A large part of the district is Fort Bend County, 65% minority.
The campaign has held phone banks in 13 languages, including six major dialects spoken in India and a Nigerian language called Igbo. Organizers have dispatched volunteers to micro-target tiny communities. It has taken a street-by-street approach to outreach that has already paid dividends. When Kulkarni defeated four challengers for the Democratic nomination, his campaign’s internal figures show that they increased the Asian-American percentage of the primary electorate from 6 percent in 2014, the last midterm election, to 28 percent in 2018.
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Olson has derided Kulkarni as an “Indo-American who’s a carpetbagger,” but it is Olson who’s the relative newcomer. Kulkarni’s family can trace its lineage back to migrants from the 1600s — and he is descended directly from the founding father of Texas, Sam Houston. Texas: It’s complicated.
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Kulkarni spent 14 years in the foreign service, with tours in Iraq, Israel, Russia, Taiwan, and Jamaica. He speaks six languages fluently (English, Spanish, Hindi, Mandarin Chinese, Hebrew, and Russian). Hasanali told me about Kulkarni visiting the Texas Democratic Party convention, discussing working in Iraq at the Muslim caucus, and cracking jokes in Hebrew at the Jewish caucus.
TEXAS CANDIDATE’S RADICAL APPROACH TO TURNING OUT ASIAN-AMERICAN NON-VOTERS: TALKING TO THEM (IN 13 DIFFERENT LANGUAGES)
There are two good diaries on DKos about this district:
Republicinsanity’s Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day: Pete Olson and Laura Clawson’s Racism lands among the top Republican campaign strategies for 2018.
He looks pretty good on issues https://kulkarniforcongress.com/
I’ll have to look at his positions in more detail, but will probably contribute to his campaign. I suspect that he will become a star.