Harris 'electrifies' West Indian voters -- and gives Biden a new edge in Florida
AUDERHILL, Fla. — Almost as soon as Kamala Harris became the first woman of Jamaican-Indian descent to be nominated for vice president, a mock White House menu of oxtail and jerk chicken cropped up on a West Indian diaspora Facebook group called Soca de Vote.
Calls from Caribbean radio show hosts flooded the Biden campaign from South Florida. And a jolt of excitement shot through the crowd of early vote poll workers at the Lauderdhill Mall, in the midst of Broward County’s growing Jamaican community.
“There was just this sense of energy,” state Rep. Anika Omphroy, a daughter of two Jamaican immigrants, said in describing the moment the announcement was received.
“It was all Black women out there working under the tents,” she said. “It was 98 degrees in August in South Florida, so it was too hot to cheer. But you could feel it, this sense.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/15/kamala-harris-west-indian-voters-395554
= new reply since forum marked as read
She's a woman, of course. She's a black woman but also of Indian descent. Her father's line is Jamaican and she's the daughter of immigrants.
It's hard to think of another candidate with as broad an appeal to our Democratic electorate.
I listened to a young Latina woman last night say that she and her friends were rocked by the choice, a brown-skinned woman (Harris) who understood firsthand the plight of US immigrants. Picked up a tweet of Preet Bharara who said the most excited person he knew was his Indian mother who couldn't wait to vote for Kamala Devi Harris. She's one of their own.
Something I didn't know until I looked it up: there are several hundred thousand Indian Americans spread across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Everyone remembers how slim those margins were in 2016. So though California is already a lock for Dems, Kamala Harris brings her own super-power attraction by just being who she is.
Biden/Harris 2020
