New Faces in Congress is a diary series meant to highlight our new and diverse members of Congress in the Democratic Party. These 36 House freshmen range from political neophytes to seasoned legislative veterans. The series will run every Sunday morning, bright and early.
Last week, the New Faces in Congress series continued with a profile on Rep. Jasmine Crockett from Texas’ 30th district. If you missed it, feel free to click on this link to read all about her!
This member of Congress has seen the highs and lows of the business world unfold at his feet. He started from basically nothing and now is a member of one of the most exclusive clubs in the world — the United States Congress. Despite being personally wealthy, he represents one of the most economically polarized districts in America covering the wealthy Grosse Pointe area as well as Detroit.
How did he make it to Congress? It was a game of musical chairs. First, Rep. Brenda Lawrence had to retire from her seat. Rep. Rashida Tlaib was also drawn into the same district, and she chose to run where her home is located. That made a Detroit seat open, and he had to face many foes in the primary. He brushed them back, and in doing so made it so that Detroit did not have black representation for the first time since the 1950s.
Today, the spotlight is on Rep. Shri Thanedar!
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Rep. Shri Thanedar (Michigan-13)
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Biography
Rep. Shri Thanedar’s biography is your American immigration success story personified. True, he has had a few setbacks like everyone else, but his successes outweigh them hundredfold. His official House website tells of his rags to riches story. This interview expounds upon his background, including his rough living at the beginning of his life and why he came to America.
To make it even tougher on him, he was a single dad for a few years between the death of his first wife via suicide and him remarrying. Wikipedia details more of his business career, both the positives and the negatives.
Chemir
In 1990, Thanedar took a job working nights and weekends for $15/hour at Chemir/Polytech Laboratories to learn the business. He took out a loan to buy Chemir in 1991 for $75,000. Sales in the first year were $150,000 and the business had three employees. By 2005, Chemir's revenues were $16 million and it employed 160 people, including 40 PhD chemists.[5]
Thanedar borrowed $24 million from Bank of America to finance seven acquisitions, offering the bank a personal guarantee to back the debt.[8] One acquisition, Azopharma, grew rapidly from $1 million in 2003 to $55 million in 2008.[9] Thanedar's group of companies employed 500 people in 2008.[8]
During the 2007–10 recession in the United States, Azopharma's revenue fell by 70%, triggering bankruptcy proceedings by Bank of America.[9] Azopharma closed and its assets were sold for $2 million.[8] During the bankruptcy proceedings, AniClin, one of Azopharma's research facilities of which Thanedar was the sole owner, abruptly closed; a 2010 USA Today article claimed that laboratory animals were abandoned at the facility after the company was placed in receivership.[10] According to later reports, animal welfare organizations facilitated the adoption of all animals in the facility, and Thanedar denied that any animals were abandoned.[11] Chemir remained profitable throughout the legal proceedings and was sold on March 31, 2011, for $23 million.[12] That sale plus the combined assets in the firm covered Thanedar's debt to Bank of America.[9]
Avomeen
Thanedar briefly retired in 2010, then came out of retirement later that year to launch Avomeen Analytical Services, an Ann Arbor-based chemical testing laboratory, with his son Neil.[13] Avomeen was named to the INC 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies in 2015 (#673) and 2016 (#1365).[14] In 2016, Thanedar sold a majority stake in the business to private equity firm High Street Capital.[15] He shared $1.5 million of the proceeds with his 50 employees.[16]
Thanedar was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Central Midwest Region (Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska) in 1999, 2007, and 2016.[17][18] He maintains 40% ownership of Avomeen.[16]
Eventually, he retired from the business world and ran for governor of Michigan, finishing a distant third in the Democratic primary after being the surprise frontrunner until the emergence of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. He did very well in immigrant and black communities across the state, including the 13th district.
He used the goodwill from his run for governor and parlayed it into a state House seat in Detroit. He stated he took the lessons from his failed gubernatorial campaign — namely money only goes so far — and outworked the opposition. His campaign website documents his two campaigns before joining Congress.
In 2018 I ran for Governor on a platform of progressive solutions, like a $15 minimum wage, and paid sick leave for working people. I know how important it is for Michigan families to have opportunities to earn a good-paying wage with one job instead of needing two or three jobs to make ends meet.
In 2020 I was elected to the Michigan State House. I represent Detroit in Lansing where I go to work every day fighting to bring funding back to our community. In Lansing, I’ve taken on the powerful corporations and special interests who all too often have outsized influence on our politics or use lobbyists to try and buy votes. This is exactly what is wrong with politics today.
Rep. Shri Thanedar is an American success story, and now his life is about giving back the the country that took him in and allowed him to be successful. In a poverty stricken area such as Detroit, that is extremely important as Shri tries to steer funds to his district.
Notable Media Headlines
Surprisingly, Rep. Shri Thanedar has not generated many headlines in his first few months in office. He has largely kept quiet, and worked on getting acclimated to politics in DC. Remember that he only had one term of experience in the Michigan State House before joining Congress. He’s close to a political neophyte.
Axios did a profile of him after 100 days in office. It included these nuggets on what he has been doing in the realm of communications with constituents.
State of play: After defeating a crowded field of candidates last year, Thanedar — who beat candidates vying to continue Detroit's 70-year streak of Black representation in Congress — has been working to connect with residents in the 13th District.
- One way is through Twitter, where the 68-year-old has intentionally cultivated a following of Democratic Socialists(you'll find them in the replies to his posts).
- "A lot of people don't understand him; they think he's just a rich guy," Adam Abusalah, a 22-year-old Dearborn native, Central Michigan University graduate student and Thanedar's communications director, tells Axios. "I try to showcase not so much that he's a congressman, but that he's a real person and a progressive with good ideas."
He actually has generated more press in India than he has in America. He was the member of Congress that escorted India’s PM Modi into the chamber during his state visit a few months back. Set aside your views on Modi for now, and imagine how huge of a deal it must have been for Thanedar to have that honor! Here he is sharing his thoughts on the India/US relationship as well as this honor with some Indian based media.
As long as he is in Congress, Rep. Shri Thanedar has the opportunity to make headlines. Sometimes the best legislators are ones that roll up their sleeves and get to work as opposed to camping out on the network TV shows all of the time.
Bills and Legislative Priorities
Rep. Shri Thanedar is on the Homeland Security Committee, as well as the Small Business Committee. Although the former committee can generate flashpoints and soundbites, Thanedar has kept his head down and not risen to the bait of the radical GOP measures to fortify the southern border.
Instead, his focus has mainly been on streamlining and modernizing the archaic green card process for immigration. He supports comprehensive immigration reform and opposes the GOP stunts to curtail immigration.
Shri is part of the New Democratic Coalition, which tends to cover the more moderate members of our House caucus. He is likely in that coalition due to them being more business friendly than your average Democratic Party member. He has written his first piece of legislation meant to cut red tape for startup small businesses.
Thanedar is also a part of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which as its name implies holds the more progressive members of our coalition. He supports many progressive priorities, as the following tweets about Medicare for All and the Green New Deal show.
On the biggest legislation of the year, the Bipartisan Debt Ceiling Deal, Thanedar was a YES. He cited the need to pay our bills as the biggest driving motivator for voting this way.
Rep. Thanedar also had some thoughts regarding the Extreme Court decisions, but they were in Twitter thread form, and thus difficult to cite here. Just know that he came out strongly against the student debt decision, the anti-LGBTQ+ decision, and also the affirmative action decision.
In terms of social media outreach, he is about the middle of the pack for the freshmen legislators I have covered. He has around 2.7k followers on Twitter. If you are still on that trash heap of a social media platform, go ahead and consider following him.
Rep. Shri Thanedar has been a quiet addition to Congress, which makes writing this profile a bit difficult. It isn’t that he hasn’t made an impact — rather he is likely still learning on the job and hasn’t spent time building up his media credentials. There could be a language barrier and racism involved as well, as English was not his first language.
In terms of longevity in Congress, I still see Thanedar jumping up for higher office when the opportunity arises, especially since he already tried for the gubernatorial chair in 2018. I expect him to be a contender for higher office in 2026, and likely to run for governor again. Of course, nothing is set in stone, and he could decide to have a long-ish career in the House instead. Either way, he will continue to sponsor small businesses and be an entrepreneur at heart.
Next week, I am profiling Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania’s 12th district. See you then!
Rep. Shri Thanedar (Michigan-13)
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