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“(Fortunes of the party have changed) Like 360 degrees. (After the first presidential debate) there was almost a sense of, ‘Oh gosh, this was ours to win, and it’s now his to win’. Then, the assassination attempt. You add those two events together, and there was a definite sense of malaise. I call it; We were paralysed. We didn’t know (what to do),” Shekar Narasimhan, chairman and founder of the Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Victory Fund, told PTI in an interview.
He was speaking about incumbent President Joe Biden’s stumble in his first televised presidential debate with his predecessor, Donald Trump, and the recent assassination attempt on the 78-year-old former president who escaped it with an injury to his ear.
“You could sense that the momentum had been taken away. This one change of putting Harris on the ticket as the presidential nominee with the Democratic Party nomination changes everything,” said Narasimhan, a major grassroots organiser, and fundraiser for the party for the past several decades.
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Last Sunday, Biden, 81, announced that he was withdrawing from the presidential race and endorsed Harris to be on top of the ticket for the November 5 general elections.
Harris then announced that she was running for the presidency, gaining the support of the top party leadership and the majority of the delegates from across the country, making her the presumptive nominee in less than 72 hours.
During the same period, she raised a record $30 million from thousands and hundreds of people at the grassroots level.
On Saturday, she officially signed her forms, declaring her candidacy for the post of President of the US, voicing confidence that she would win the high-stakes election on November 5.
She is, however, yet to be officially declared the presidential candidate by the Democrats.
“It feels like everything has changed in just five days. The first 24 to 72 hours were like drinking from a fire hose, just trying to keep up with developments,” Narasimhan said.
“The last two (days) have been a little bit more sober but about activation and mobilisation. So, what is some of the evidence? I mean, there are organic calls being organised by women. South Asian women as an example. There was a call which had 9,000-10,000 people. They raised money, they got volunteer sign-ups,” he said.
Harris, whose mother moved to the United States from Chennai at the age of six for higher studies and whose father is an African American who moved to the US from Jamaica, would formally be declared as the presidential nominee of the Democratic party at its once-in-four-year convention next month.
She has already broken several glass ceilings and is now the first woman of colour on the ticket of a major political party.
While her nomination has given an unprecedented level of energy and groundswell of support, Narasimhan, who has been involved in several presidential races for the past several decades, says that the pathway to the White House for Harris is through seven battleground states – Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
The ruling party, which was earlier struggling to find a pathway to get even 270 electoral college votes — the halfway mark for any candidate to be declared the winner of a presidential election — is now targeting to win between 324 to 332 electoral college votes, he said.
“Earlier, to be honest with you, this was about getting to 270. How you get to 270 if you’re a Democrat is you win your base, you win the blue wall, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, you’re at 269. You add to that one vote from Nebraska or Maine, and you’re at 270, or you add one other state. That felt like what we were playing for,” he said.
“Guess what? We’re now saying 324, 332. Let’s go for the broadest mandate she can get because it will also give us the opportunity to take back the House, hold the Senate, and be able to get things done. So, I feel like the energy level has shifted, and the momentum has come to our side,” he said.
At the same time, Narasimhan noted that with former president Trump being on the other side, nothing could be taken for granted.
“He can try to change the dynamics of the race. He does have money. He does have support. He does have a base. I still think this is going to be a very close race,” Narasimhan said, adding that 50,000 people in a few places will decide this election.
“Let’s get there. First and foremost, can you hold your community (and) your constituency and win where you have to win? I believe we can win Nevada. I believe we can win Arizona and the blue wall. I now think North Carolina and Georgia are within reach. To me, the momentum shift is the black vote, the Latino vote, the Asian American vote,” he said.
“Then when you put subsets behind that, it’s I think we have now decidedly brought everybody on the South Asian and the Indian American. If our vote would have been 70 per cent for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it should be 80 now. So I think we will see more turnout and a higher percentage of that turnout voting in our favour,” Narasimhan said.
The AAPI Victory Fund is one of the first of its kind SuperPac focused exclusively on building the political power of the Asian American Pacific Islander community.