NEW YORK: Suhas Subramanyam is on his way to Congress where he will join the 'Samosa Caucus', the group of Indian American lawmakers, boosting its strength to six.
In his Virginia constituency, he had 52.1 per cent of the votes to 47.9 per cent for his Republican rival with 97 per cent of the votes counted.
He was declared the winner by The Associated Press, which calls elections based on the counting data before the official announcement.
Subramanyam now serves in the Virginia General Assembly after having been a technology policy adviser in President Barack Obama’s White House and starting a business.
His mother is from Bengaluru and his father is from Chennai.
Subramanyam got his undergraduate degree from Tulane University and went to work on Capitol Hill as a policy aide, where he worked to expand and improve health care access to millions of Americans [and] helped build a bipartisan coalition in support of immigration reform, ” according to his campaign biography.
After a Law degree from Northwestern University, he joined the White House staff.
He contested the election on his record of helping small businesses and working families and promoting laws to bring down medicine prices.
Suhas and his wife Miranda Peña Subramanyam have two daughters.
All the five Indian Americans in the House of Representatives – Ro Khanna, Ami Bera, Pramila Jayapal, Raja Krishnamoorthi, and Shri Thaneda – are expected to be re-elected.
Amish Shah, another Democrat, running for the House from Arizona had a slender lead of 1.8 per cent with 54 per cent of the votes at 11:30 p.m. in New York (10 a.m. in India).