By Shailesh Shrestha | July, 28th, 2015

South Asian for Strong America (SASA), a New York City based political advocacy group, recently organized a press meet at New Hyde Park, Queens to publicly endorse Ms. Celia Devi Dosamantes as their candidate who they believe has carried out their issues and agendas. SASA is advocating for their political representation in the various constituents at New York metropolitan and abroad where the South Asian population has been substantially and rapidly growing. However, compared to the percentage of the South Asian population they have not been able to grab a single seat in the New York City Council and in other public offices.

One of the founding members of SASA, Mr. Jagajjt Singh who initially conceptualized the idea of political activism and advocacy emphasized the need of proportional representation not only in the district number 23 but in many other constituents. As per the report of the 2010 census, the New York City district 23 is almost 39 percent South Asian. Mr. Singh said emphasizing the need of South Asian representation, “We should now proactively focus in those constituents to challenge the incumbent and establishment of the both party to secure our representation and political fair share which we absolutely deserve. And this endorsement and proclamation would be wake up call for our South Asian political enthusiast.”

The seat has been vacated in this constituent when incumbent Council Member Mark Weprin (Democrat) signed on June 14th, 2015. The primary will be held on September 10th of this year, and there are six other democrats including Ms. Dosamentes in the race. After having the most anticipated endorsement from SASA, she extended her gratitude and confidence to win the primary and she outlined and emphasized her priorities. Responding to the questions from various ethnic media she expressed her confidence “I have outstanding record of working on education and public safely and I would continue to focus at those issues to bring better outcome to serve the needy community and I know the issues of my constituents.”

Ms. Dosamentes would be a facing tough and uphill battle in the primary from her democratic challengers such as Rebecca Lynch, Ali Najmi, Barry Grodenchik, Satnam Parhar and Bob Fredrich. Then if she wins the intra party primary she will be facing the republican opponent Mr. Joe Cancannon in the November general election.