This was the advice that 21-year-old Satveer Chaudhary from Fridley, Minn. received while working as a foreign policy intern for Senator Edward Kennedy in 1991. Nine years later, Chaudhary made history when he became the first ever Indian-American state senator. On November 8, 2000, Chaudhary, who had already made his mark as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, won his seat with 57 percent of the votes from a 60,000-strong constituency.

Chaudhary’s parents had emigrated from Haryana in the 1960s. His father was a veterinarian, and after completing his veterinary science education in Minnesota, was having difficulty finding a job. He wrote a letter voicing his concerns to Hubert Humphrey, who was then a U.S. senator from Minnesota. One day, when Chaudhary’s father was working in the garden, Chaudhary’s mother came running to the window saying, “Hubert Humphrey is on the phone! Hubert Humphrey is on the phone!”

“Dad didn’t believe her at first,” recalls Chaudhary. “Finally he was coaxed to the phone and it was indeed Senator Humphrey on the line.”

Humphrey told a stunned Chaudhary Senior that he had received the letter, and that if Chaudhary were indeed a qualified vet, there was no reason that he could not join the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Chaudhary’s father retired from the same department 25 years later.

“I think that laid the seed of our belief in the power of politics, and how politics can make a difference in people’s lives —especially to a non-American,” Chaudhary says.

In high school, Chaudhary worked as a bus boy and a dishwasher at a local restaurant, and was appalled by the fact that workers under 18 received less than the minimum wage, despite the fact that they worked long hours. “Even the best worker in the restaurant got only a five cent raise after her probationary period,” Chaudhary says.

He then became involved with a labor group and worked to raise wages. He also joined the famous Cesar Chavez movement in California that aimed to improve the working conditions of farm laborers. Chaudhary went on a hunger strike with Chavez shortly after completing high school and remembers being deeply inspired by the movement. His parents were surprised to see their son participate in a movement halfway across the country, which was fighting to better the plight of immigrant Mexican grape growers in the fields of California.

During college and law school, Chaudhary participated in the campaigns of several local candidates, and was slowly drawn to the idea of running himself. “It became hard not to think about how I would act if I were the candidate,” he says.

As a political novice, Chaudhary, by his own admission, did not play his cards right and was unable to win the Democratic Party’s endorsement the first time he ran for state senator. Drawing lessons from that defeat, he built support from both his party and the community for the 2000 election —even when the major newspaper in his district did not endorse him, and most political pundits wrote him off.

“Political pundits did not know my community,” he says, of his largely Caucasian constituency.

According to Chaudhary, there are only 16,000 Indians in the whole of Minnesota, which is more than 90 percent white. But this actually worked in his favor, because it facilitated greater assimilation with his community. His active involvement also made his name more generally known. Moreover, having a name like “Satveer Chaudhary” has benefits that other candidates with American names only dream of having. “Pronounce my name or not, the average voter will have a hard time forgetting it,” he quips. “That’s half of your work.”

Chaudhary says that whenever the issue of his ethnicity has come up, he has been able to turn it into an advantage. Being the son of an immigrant, who started with nothing and then realized the American Dream through hard work, is a theme that resonates with people and has won him respect.

Currently, he is focused on his re-election campaign, while simultaneously practicing law in his private practice. Chaudhary’s goal is to fulfill a long-cherished dream of setting up a multicultural technology magnate school in his district.

But will he run for a higher office in the future? Chaudhary says that will require Indian-Americans from across the country to support his local campaign in Minnesota. He feels that involvement at the grassroots level and becoming active in one’s local community are things that Indian-Americans have not ventured to do, primarily because of a sense of arrogance in choosing to be associated with what they believe are loftier things.

Amongst all areas of work in the U.S., politics has perhaps the lowest level of participation from Indian Americans, for reasons including low salary levels in the government. This has broader implications on not only the socio-political status of Indians in America but also the overall American stance on India and the South Asian region. With elected officials in the U.S. continually having to generate funding and support for their re-election for the next term, the political views of elected officials in the U.S. are driven by their staff. A lack of Indian staffers in the offices of American politicians means Indian interests, domestic and international, don’t get the attention they could.

Chaudhary believes an American of Indian origin can become a U.S. senator, or even the president of the United States, in the future. But only if the community shows support from the time that he or she is a local player.

“Nobody starts their company in the Fortune 500,” he says. “They always start as a startup with investors along the way.”
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