Lehman Brothers’ Managing Director Romita Shetty

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean has appointed four co-chairs to the DNC’s new South Asian American Leadership Council, which will organize South Asian voters—and more importantly, campaign donors—during the 2008 election. The co-chairs are high-up in the financial and technical fields: they are New York investor bankers Parag Saxena, Kashif Zafar and Romita Shetty and Yahoo! Senior Director Dilawar Syed.

While South Asian Americans do not make up a substantial portion of the electorate, they have a higher median income than the country as a whole—$57,518, compared to $44,389, in 2005. They also have strong social networks, and many are well-positioned within technical and financial industries. Like Jewish Americans have, South Asians are coming into their own this year as a small but powerful demographic. So far, the Republican National Committee has yet to form a South Asian group of its own.

See Anup Kaphle and Jonathan Maher’s story about Sugar Land, Tex., for a Congressional race that South Asians might swing. The story package also includes a detailed map of South Asians across the country, showing income, education and political power.