Meet Ro: The Indian-American hailed as ‘Silicon Valley’s Wannabe Obama’

Silicon Valley is putting its considerable weight behind Ro Khanna, a 37-year-old Indian-American contesting for the House of Representatives from California’s District 17, Silicon Valley’s own district. According to a report which appeared in today’s Hindustan Times, Khanna’s campaign has raised over $1 million in the quarter ending June, which is a record for a campaign which hasn’t dipped into the candidate’s personal wealth. Contributors to Khanna’s campaign include Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, angel investor Ron Conway and Flipboard founder Mike McCue. [caption id=“attachment_950869” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ro Khanna. Image courtesy www.rokhanna.com[/caption] Ro Khanna (Ro is short for Rohit) is a first-generation Indian-American, and is running against Mike Honda, a Japanese-American who is a 12-year veteran of the House of Representatives. Both of them are running as Democrats. According to the report, Khanna is seen as a young upstart by some, and some others have hailed him as ‘Silicon Valley’s Wannabe Obama’. Steven Spinner, one of Obama’s top fundraisers, is Khanna’s campaign chairman and the president’s national field director Jeremy Bird is his chief strategist. But interestingly enough, Obama himself has not endorsed Khanna, going instead for a Honda endorsement. The Khanna campaign is seemingly not concerned with “pro forma endorsements” from people who are not District 17 voters. This is a pre-dominantly Asian-American seat, with a large population of South Asians, and according to Khanna’s campaign, they haven’t found adequate representation yet. Read the full report here.