Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Sunday released the names of its major fundraisers, including Indian Americans, who helped raise at least USD 100,000 for his campaign this year. The list of 800 major donors includes a few dozen Indian Americans. Topping the list of Indian Americans are well known community leaders Swadesh Chatterjee, Rameshk Kapoor, Shekar N Narasimhan, R Rangaswami, Ajay Jain Bhutoria, and Frank Islam.
Among other prominent Indian American bundlers are Neil Makhija, Rahu, Prakash, Deepak Raj, Raj Shah, Rajan Shah, Radhika Shah, Jill and Raj Singh, Nidhi Thakar, Kiran Jain, Sony Kalsi, and Bela Bajaria. Indian-American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal has also been listed as a bundler.
Given that the list of bundlers includes all those who have raised more than USD 100,000, the number of Indian Americans in far less than those of former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton campaigns. Some of the traditional Indian-American Democratic donors like hotelier Sant Chatwal are missing from the list.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the list of bundlers includes a who's who of Democratic politics, including former and current governors, Senators, Cabinet secretaries and big names from Hollywood.
Film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, writer and director Lee Daniels, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; media mogul Haim Saban and former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker are on the list, the daily said.
According to CNN, Biden is on track to become the first presidential candidate to raise USD 1 billion from donors in a two-year cycle, and he entered the final sprint to Election Day with a big cash advantage over US President Donald Trump. In August and September alone, Biden raised more than USD 700 million.
With less than 50 hours to go for the US presidential elections, Indian-American supporters of both President Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden on Sunday intensified their campaigns, particularly in battleground states, asking the community members to get out and vote and support their respective leaders.
Unlike in the previous years, the campaigning among Indian Americans have this time restricted their campaigns to mainly the digital domain and phone banking due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both the campaigns have planned to intensify their phone calls to Indian-American supporters, send them messages on WhatsApp and reach out to them through other social media and emails.
Indian-American supporters of President Trump's campaign organised a couple of events for the community including a fire chat conducted by Indian Voices for Trump with Nikki Haley, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations.
President's two sons Donald J Trump Jr and Eric Trump engaged with the community respectively at a meet and greet event in New York and Atlanta in Georgia.
Trump's daughter-in-Law Lara Trump paid floral tributes to the statue of Mahatma Gandhi along with members of the Sikhs for Trump and India Voices for Trump.
The Biden Campaign outreach has been mainly in the virtual domain. Former vice president Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris organised a special India Independence Day event for Indian Americans.
Biden and Harris greeted Indian Americans on the occasion of various festivals including the recently concluded Navaratri. Biden also wrote an op-ed in the ethnic India West newspaper, asserting the strong relationship that he has with the community and his strong ties with India.
At least two recent surveys indicated that majority of Indian Americans support Biden. But they also indicated that the support base of Indian Americans for the Democrats has shrunk a little bit and they have started moving towards the Trump campaign.
Another survey conducted by Al Mason, from the Trump Campaign, claimed that in battleground states, at least 50% of the Indian Americans who voted for the Democrats in 2016 will vote for Trump this election cycle.
Biden and Trump, a Republican, are facing each other in the November 3 presidential polls.