A spike in the funding for Kamala Harris came from Indian American donors soon after her elevation to candidacy, reversing the flailing campaign following Biden’s catastrophic debate with Trump. While funding on the Democrat side has increased dramatically since the ticket turned to Harris, it is not clear if that is because of her, or because of the lack of enthusiasm for a second Biden presidency. 

Harris’s ethnicity has been part of the conversation on funding. When questions on Biden’s struggling candidacy were raised, there was a concern that if any candidate other than Harris were to be put on the Democratic ticket, it would lead to a backlash from Black voters. There was little talk of offending Indian Americans voters. The community was seen as still not having the ‘numbers’ to be decisive. The population is distributed throughout the US rather than in small geographical areas that would assure it consistent representation.

But elections are not just about the numbers a community can claim at the ballot box. 

This is not to say that Indian Americans do not vote in sufficient numbers – at 74 percent voter turnout during the 2020 election, the community was more politically engaged than most other US ethnic groups. Indian-born members of the community who acquired US citizenship (as opposed to being born in the US) have even higher rates of voter turnout, ironic given that this population is largely derived from highly educated, metropolitan Indians, who had much lower electoral participation rates while in India. For a community with a small demographic footprint, the key to political power is thoughtful, and potentially coordinated funding. 

For two decades now, there have been conversations on how Indian Americans’ strategy of making a mark in US politics is driven by the Jewish American example, whose influence in electoral politics is much bigger than the 2.4 percent share of the population it has.

There are several factors that impact attitudes towards political funding, the existence of a common cause matters, as does the culture of political funding in that community. This is particularly important for first-generation migrants whose attitudes towards political funding exist in a continuum from their experiences in their countries of origin. 

Now in India, with some exceptions, party contributions are frequently driven by extortion, so there is a bit of unlearning involved. Money is no less central to US politics than it is to Indian politics, but there are important differences, especially as it relates to legal lobbying, which help understand political participation.