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.

Sugar Land’s South Asians, in particular, are the focus of an extensive report on News21. They’re a small but significant number, about 9,000 in the city and 35,000 in the wider congressional district (Texas 22nd). Many first arrived from India and Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s to meet the needs of the growing energy and aerospace industries. Today this vibrant and prosperous community wants political currency and has begun to make the necessary steps to acquire it.

In these same Houston suburbs, Democratic Congressman Nick Lampson is campaigning for reelection. Even though he is the incumbent, some still consider him a dark horse: a Democrat in a bastion of Republicanism. He’s in search of a new enduring majority and is keenly aware of the budding South Asian voting bloc.
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In Herndon, part of well-to-do Fairfax County, a battle has been raging since 2005 over Hispanic day laborers. After Herndon proposed an official site for day laborers to congregate, officials had to unplug the phones at Town Hall to avoid a flood of angry calls. Two years later, Herndon closed down the day labor site, after a judge ruled that the town could not bar illegal immigrants from using it. The day laborers, who typically work in the region’s thriving construction industry, returned to the streets.

Now, the Fairfax Times reports Herndon Councilman Dennis Husch is proposing a series of measures designed to keep day laborers off town streets. These measures include confiscating bicycles chained to signs and trees, revoking convenience stores’ licenses to sell alcohol, and even removing pay phones, which day laborers use to find work. Perhaps most unusual would be the establishment of a “‘pedestrian safety zone’ that would prohibit standing along Elden Street between Herndon Parkway and Sterling Road.”

Preventing people from standing on the street? Will that protect Herndon from illegal immigrants, or do you think it’s going too far? Share your comments below. And check out our News21 reports on immigration crackdowns in Pennsylvania and Texas).

Republican presidential candidate John McCain is running a new ad that seems to pit Latino interests against the Democratic candidate. In Spanish text and voiceovers, the ad notes that Obama neglected to mention a single Latin American country during his “citizen of the world” speech in Berlin. (Read more on Huffington Post)

Will this ad work, or does McCain’s claim rest on shaky ground? Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, one of Obama’s biggest Latino supporters, called it “another low road attempt by John McCain to distract from his own record on Latino issues.” Latinos are a much-coveted voting bloc this year, and they are much more willing to vote Republican than blacks, the nation’s largest minority. Plus, blacks and Latinos have also had a tense relationship in the past.

But McCain’s latest targeted ad may well fall flat among some Latino immigrant voters. When News 21 reporters talked to immigrants around the country, we found that Latinos have warmed up to Obama. View our “Obama Factor” video montage, which features a dozen interviews with immigrants nationwide.

Barletta, the Republican mayor of Hazleton, Pa., has built a reputation as an anti-immigration hardliner, and now he is running against Democrat Paul Kanjorski in Pennsylvania’s 11th District. This should be a good year for Democrats, but Kanjorski may have a fight on his hands.

Check out my News21 multimedia project, “The Mayor Who Cried ‘Whoa’” for more about Lou Barletta and immigration in Northeast Pennsylvania. (Don’t miss the Vuvox panorama of Wyoming Street, a virtual walk-though of Hazleton’s Latino district.)

When News21 reporters talked to immigrants around the country about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, we found that many identified with him, not only because Obama is a minority, but because his multi-ethnic background and peripatetic childhood gave him a taste of the immigrant experience.

Now, Filipino-American Sam Cacas, writing for Asian Week, has declared Obama to be the first “BlAsian” presidential candidate—that is, black and Asian. “BlAsian in the combined biological family sense,” Cacas explains, going on to quote Obama’s campaign book, The Audacity of Hope.

“In a sense, I have no choice but to believe in this vision of America. As a child of a black man and a white woman, someone who was born in the racial melting pot of Hawaii, with a sister who is half-Indonesian but who’s usually mistaken for Mexican or Puerto Rican, and a brother-in-law and niece of Chinese descent, with some blood relatives who resemble Margaret Thatcher and others who could pass for Bernie Mac, I’ve never had the option of restricting my loyalties on the basis of race or measuring my worth on the basis of tribe.”

Could the “BlAsian” label simply be another sign that Obama is a post-racial candidate? Or are Latinos and Asians backing the Democrat because he functions as a mirror for almost every racial group?

See News21’s video montage for more immigrants’ perspectives on Obama, and check out Mira Jang’s investigation of Asian voters trending Democratic.

Those findings are detailed in a comprehensive online package on the News21 site. An extensive text piece is complemented by various multimedia components, including a video portrait of a pro-Obama Chinese-American family, and audio clips from both McCain and Obama supporters, plus an interactive map tracking Asian-American population centers around the United States.