Raising Funds--and Political Clout

The fund-raising calls start early from Sunil “Sunny” Aghi’s insurance business on Santa Ana Canyon Road in Anaheim.

This time, Aghi is wooing callers to an event this week in Beverly Hills with President Clinton. But it’s a hard sell among Southern California’s Indo-American community, which he tirelessly has finessed during the last two years into an emerging donor base for Democrats.

It’s a tougher job these days. Enthusiasm among Southern Californians who trace their heritage to India has been dampened by sanctions imposed by the Clinton administration after India’s nuclear bomb tests. It wasn’t helped by the president’s recent admission to an adulterous affair with then-22-year-old White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“I was having such a good response before,” said a frustrated Aghi, thwarted again on another $5,000 ticket confirmation.

Prospects have been brighter for other candidates backed by the Indo-Americans Political Foundation, which Aghi founded two years ago to encourage more political involvement by his ethnic community.

So far, most of the $230,000 the foundation has raised this year will go to Democrats, viewed by Aghi and his board as more responsive to ethnic minorities.

The group is backing half a dozen Democratic congressional candidates for the November election, including Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Garden Grove. It also is supporting the reelection of U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and Lt. Gov. Gray Davis for governor, Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante of Fresno for lieutenant governor and state Sen. Bill Lockyer of Hayward for attorney general, all of them Democrats.

Locally, the group is helping the reelections of Mayors Tom Daly of Anaheim and Miguel A. Pulido Jr. of Santa Ana, also Democrats.

The money is rolling in, despite the reluctance for Clinton’s Saturday event. The amount raised or pledged since March matches the $220,000 raised in 1996 and 1997.

Aghi, 39, estimates that the 1.1 million Indo-Americans in the United States will account for about $5 million in political fund-raising this year. About 400,000 live in California; of Orange County’s 25,000 Indo-Americans, about 500 are politically active, he said.

“We’re not 25% of the population in California like the Hispanics, but we can help candidates financially to make ourselves known,” he said.

The foundation aims to influence national and state policies that are important to Indo-Americans, including repudiating Pakistan as a terrorist country. Both Pakistan and India were sanctioned in May by the U.S. government for testing nuclear weapons.

It also wants to see an Indo-American promoted to the secretary level in the U.S. government by 2000.

“Even having someone on the assistant secretary level would be a great victory for the Indo-American community,” Aghi said.

Clearly, Democrats aren’t alone in wooing this group’s emerging political and financial clout. Both parties estimate the community is split evenly between Democratic and Republican voters.

California Republican Party Chairman Michael Schroeder of Irvine said the GOP has two state-chartered organizations reaching out to the Indo-American community, including the Indo-American Republican Assn. and the United Muslim Republican Assn.

Immigrants and their descendants from India, Pakistan, China and South Korea “present our best opportunity for rapid expansion of Republican registration among ethnic communities,” Schroeder said. “Culturally, they agree with us on the issues.”

One of two Indo-American candidates for office in California this year is Asha Knott, a Republican Assembly candidate in southern Los Angeles County.

The other is Peter Mathews, a Democrat and Cerritos College teacher making his third run against Rep. Stephen Horn (R-Long Beach).

Aghi said members of his foundation are not donating to either candidate because their chances of winning are too slim.

Democrats say the Republican efforts to connect with Indo-Americans and other immigrant groups from Asia will not work if the GOP focuses solely on a few compatible issues.

State Democratic official Bob Mulholland said minorities have flocked to the Democratic Party because of GOP-led initiatives that targeted immigrants as a drain on society and ended affirmative action programs that encouraged minority college admissions and hiring.

“The minority community sees us as very sympathetic to their concerns,” Mulholland said. “Wilson’s behavior with Propositions 187 and 209 helped us.”

Aghi’s political education started early--and unfortunately. As a 20-year-old college student, he had just arrived in Michigan in 1980 and was putting gas in his car when he was surrounded by a group of off-duty Marines.

“They beat me up thinking I was Iranian,” Aghi said.

Sixteen years later, Aghi was confronted at a Sanchez rally by a protester in a cowboy hat who spat, “You illegal, why don’t you go back across the border?”

“Psychologically, people like that say, ‘We’re Americans’ and everyone else came from somewhere else,” Aghi said. “People ask me, ‘Where are you from?’ and I say, ‘Anaheim.’ ”

A 1986 graduate of Cal Poly Pomona, Aghi received a master’s degree in business from West Coast University. A college counselor suggested that he come up with a nickname, since his first name can be difficult to pronounce. Henceforth, he became Sunny Aghi.

He lives in Anaheim Hills with his wife, Dimple, and sons Reshee, 6, and Rohan, 3, and daughter Devika, 1. The family may move to Yorba Linda in 2000, when Aghi hopes to run as a Democrat for the 41st Congressional District.