Six Indian American candidates in metro Atlanta aren’t just seeking office. They’re rewriting who gets to lead Georgia.

Sometime in the early 2000s, a joke circulated in Atlanta’s Indian American community: the only way a desi got their name in a Georgia newspaper was in the business section or in an obituary. Politics, the punchline went, was for other people.

Two decades later, the punchline no longer lands. In the spring and summer of 2026, at least six Indian Americans are running for public office in metro Atlanta. The shift from political donors to candidates is not surprising, considering the demographic changes, political awakening, and—if you listen to the candidates themselves—a growing impatience with watching decisions get made by people who don’t live your life.

The Long Road to Candidacy

The first wave of Indian immigrants who arrived after the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act was largely composed of professionals—doctors, engineers, researchers. Their civic engagement, if it occurred at all, took the form of checks written to candidates they believed would protect their interests or advance their adopted country’s values.

Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, the Indian American community became a coveted fundraising constituency for both parties—affluent, and politically legible as a bloc that cared deeply about immigration, education, and economic opportunity. Candidates courted the community at Diwali galas, Hindu temple events, and mosques.

The next phase of political engagement came in the form of organizing, activism, and advocacy. The 2020 Georgia Senate runoffs galvanized extraordinary volunteer energy among South Asians. Groups such as the Asian American Advocacy Fund registered tens of thousands of new voters across metro Atlanta. This spirited engagement may well have been the reason behind Georgia’s crucial role in tilting the balance of the U.S. Senate From Republicans to Democrats.

From Bystanders to Candidates

Jyot Singh, now a candidate himself for Georgia House District 97, was part of that effort, helping mobilize AAPI voters and leading the successful campaign to renew Gwinnett’s E-SPLOST, which secured $1.4 billion for Gwinnett Public Schools. He also helped elect Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, building the kind of coalition infrastructure that now underpins his own campaign.

For many in the community, the years between 2016 and 2020 were the hinge. “Trump running in 2016 was truly a wake-up call for South Asians and various immigrant communities,” Singh says. “We as Indian Americans have realized that our place in politics isn’t merely on the sidelines. We belong on the ballot and in elected office. Seeing Indian Americans not just run for office but win and be effective has shown me and an entire generation what is possible.”

For Shuchita Patel, running as a Democrat for the Forsyth County Commission was about a long-overdue correction. “For a long time, Indian Americans operated under an unspoken agreement: keep your head down, work hard, don’t make waves,” she says. “The ‘model minority’ label was never the compliment it was presented as. It was a way of keeping a community compliant and out of the way.” However, soon, the calculus shifted. Members of the community that had spent a generation proving they belonged began asking a different question—not whether they could participate in democracy, but whether they could lead it.

For Rahul Garabadu, the moment arrived with clarity. As a voting rights attorney at the ACLU of Georgia, he had already taken on the state legislature over post-2020 redistricting maps that failed to account for Georgia’s changing demographics, and won. As a federal civil rights prosecutor at the Department of Justice, he had held Fulton County Jail authorities accountable for inhumane conditions, resulting in a consent decree. “As an attorney, I have dedicated my life to ensuring that the rule of law is upheld,” he says. “The last straw for me was when the Trump Administration’s FBI raided a Fulton County elections facility and seized hundreds of boxes of ballot materials.” He announced his campaign for State Senate District 7 within weeks.

Shelly Abraham’s breaking point was quieter. He had been paying attention to Georgia politics for years, watching and waiting for what he describes as “higher quality candidates.” The wait became its own answer. “I’m not a natural politician, but I have been paying attention to politics for years,” he says. “I’ve been searching for higher-quality candidates to present themselves, but I realized that I could be the change.” His dis- trict—housing costs climbing, adult children unable to afford homes of their own— gave him a policy anchor. His engineering background gave him a framework.

Vishal Srivastava echoes the same sentiment. “I have transitioned from being a resident to a stakehold- er and an owner in the future of Forsyth County,” he says. A data and analytics executive accustomed to measuring performance against global benchmarks, he looked at Forsyth County’s schools—excellent by state standards—and saw an organization at risk of confusing local rankings with global readiness.

Mathew Philip came to candidacy through years of listening. His dual career in corporate leadership and pastoral ministry gave him two distinct but complementary skills: strategic thinking and the ability to sit with people in their actual lives.

The Geography of Change

The rise of Indian Americans in Georgia politics mirrors the community’s growth. Nationally, the Indian American population has grown from about 1.8 million in 2000 to over 5 million today. According to the Atlanta Regional Commission (ACS), the Indian American population in the Atlanta region has nearly doubled in just five years, from roughly 72,000 in 2013 to around 123,000 by 2018, making it one of the most significant Indian American hubs in the Southeast.

Gwinnett, long one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, is today among the most diverse in the nation, with nearly 30 percent Asian American population. Forsyth County, which was overwhelmingly white as recently as 2000, has seen a rapid influx of Asians, drawn to good schools, relative affordability, and prox- imity to the tech corridors of North Fulton.

The Forsyth County school system, ranked third in Georgia by graduation rate at 96 percent, now serves a student body in which significant portions of families are foreign-born. The county’s small-business landscape—along Highway 9 and around Market Place Boulevard—is dotted with Indian grocery stores, restaurants, and professional offices. The Indian community is no longer a newcomer; it has become a prominent demographic group in Forsyth County.

And yet, as recently as 2024, virtually no one who looked like them sat on the boards and commissions making decisions about those schools, those roads, that growth. That gap—between demographic weight and political representation—is the space that the six candidates running for office article are trying to occupy.

Identity as Strength, Not Strategy

Every Indian American candidate running for office in a majority-non-Indian district faces a version of the same question: how much of yourself do you bring into the room? The answers these six candidates give are revealing—not for their differences, but for how much they converge.

None of them describes their identity as something to be managed or minimized. All of them describe it as an asset—a set of values that translates across constituency lines. But they are also clear-eyed about the limits of identity politics as an electoral strategy.

Jyot Singh, as a Sikh candidate, wears his turban on the trail, making the case most visually. “I know that, as a sardar, I don’t look like most candidates in Georgia, but when I speak with my neighbors of different backgrounds, I always find that we have more in common than what separates us,” he says. “Gwinnett is the most diverse county in Georgia, and we need leaders who recognize that diversity as a strength.”

His campaign launch—150 people at Jones Bridge Park, where he grew up having picnics with his family after school—was itself a living argument: aunts and uncles alongside former teachers and com- munity leaders turned it into a multiracial, multigenerational coalition.

Shuchita Patel is direct about the double-edged nature of running as a South Asian in Forsyth County. She grew up training in Bharatanatyam, attending Bal Vihar, and participating in IACA. “It shapes how you see the world. You notice what others might miss.” She acknowledges that there have been attempts in this race to weaponize her identity. “Do I face prejudice because of how I look? Yes,” she says flatly. “But, that’s not a liability for a commissioner. It’s exactly the kind of perspective a commission needs. “

Shelly Abraham approaches the question from a faith-based frame. “As a Christian, I believe we all have equal intrinsic value and that the main thing that divides us is the false narratives that the media portrays,” he says. “I may not look like most of the people in my district, but I can relate to all of them.”

For Rahul Garabadu, the word is “bridge.” His identity as the son of Indian immigrants, he says, “informs my values and allows me to connect with folks from all sorts of walks of life.” His mother served as a former president of the Indian American Cultural Association; his father has participated in community events for decades. Community is not something he code-switches into—it’s where he started.

Philip has made coalition-building an explicit strategy. “No matter their background or political affiliation, people care about their families and their future,” he says. Srivastava finds a similar convergence in education. “Whether your family has been here for five gen- erations or five years, we are all invested in the same outcome,” he says.

What’s Changing on the Ground

Inside temples, professional networks, and party structures, the candidacies of this cycle are already producing visible effects. Abraham observes: “Many of the professional and community organizations have become more open to building relationships with Indian-American candidates. New organizations to help fellow Indian-American candidates are also springing up.” Voter registration drives that once targeted Indian Americans as a civic afterthought are now being led by Indian Americans.

The effect is also deeply personal. At his campaign launch, Garabadu met the nine-year-old son of a supporter who had just joined his elementary school student government and was excited to make his school a better place. “His enthusiasm was infectious,” Garabadu says, “and it made me feel very hopeful about the future of our country.”

The Long Arc Of Political Representation

It would be easy to overstate what this moment represents. Six candidates running in a single cycle does not constitute a political revolution. Some will win; some will lose. The structural barriers that kept Indian Americans out of Georgia politics for decades—incumbency advantage, the fundraising gap, the cultural unfamiliarity of retail politics—do not disappear because a community reaches critical demographic mass.

The  partisan  range of this cohort is itself notable: Singh, Garabadu, Pa- tel, Srivastava, and Abraham running as Democrats, Philip as a Republican. The Indian American community in Georgia defies easy partisan categorization— which may be, in the long run, a source of political leverage rather than weakness. Candidates from both parties have reason to compete for these voters and these volunteers.

But something has shifted in the register of ambition. These candidates are not running to prove a point or to represent their community symbolically. None of them is running a vanity campaign. They are running to win, and they are building the machinery—the field operations, precinct strategy, the endorsement networks, the donor lists. Srivastava frames it precisely: “For a long time, our community has been the ultimate consumer of Georgia’s great schools and economic opportunities. I want my candidacy to signal our transition from being consumers of the system to being its stewards. This moment isn’t just about representation; it’s about responsibility.”

Patel puts the goal in the plainest terms. She wants to prove that a South Asian woman can win a county commission race in Forsyth County, Georgia, running on accountability and equity. “Not because it’s symbolic, but because it opens a door. The next person who looks different from the traditional profile of a Forsyth County commissioner should be able to look at 2026 and see a map.” And more than that: “I want this moment to be proof that our community doesn’t have to wait to be invited. We don’t have to earn the right to lead by being the least threatening version of ourselves. We built something real here. It’s time to protect it.”

Singh, who could make history as the first Indian American elected to the Georgia legislature, has the clearest sense of what that visibility means across generations. He was the boy nervous and excited to wear his turban to school for the first time. Now he is a candidate, which means that somewhere in Gwinnett County, another kid who looks like him can see what is possible. “I hope my candidacy and this broader moment show young Indian Americans and young Georgians of all backgrounds that they belong in the rooms where the decisions that affect their lives are made,” he says. “I’m excited to become the first Indian American elected to the Georgia legislature—and committed to ensuring I’m not the last.”

The arc of Indian American political participation in Georgia is long. But in the spring and summer of 2026, it is unmistakably bending— slowly, undeniably— toward the front of the room.

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Deputy Editor at Khabar and Finalist at Atlanta Press Awards, Pooja Garg is a CUNY and USC Annenberg Fellow in Writing and Community Storytelling.

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 Meet The Candidates

RAHUL GARABADU

Democrat running for Georgia State Senate, District 7

A civil rights attorney and Georgetown and Harvard Law graduate, Garabadu built his career by challenging unjust institutions — winning a redistricting case against the State of Georgia after 2020 and prosecuting Fulton County Jail authorities for inhumane conditions, resulting in a consent decree. He left the DOJ when the Trump administration dismantled civil rights enforcement rather than compromise his principles.The FBI raid on a Fulton County elections facility was his final breaking point. He lives in Norcross with his wife, Julia, a physician. His platform centers on affordability, Medicaid expansion, protection for immigrant communities, and democratic integrity.

JYOT SINGH

Democrat running for Georgia House of Representatives, District 97

A Sikh community organizer, small business owner,andYale graduate who grew up in Gwinnett—working multiple jobs to support his family, navigating life without health insurance, and running catering events to get through college. Singh helped elect Senators Ossoff and Warnock, mobilized thousands of AAPI voters, and led Gwinnett’s E-SPLOST renewal, securing $1.4B for public schools. He would be the first Indian American elected to the Georgia legislature. “I was the Sikh boy, nervous and excited to wear his turban to school for the first time,” he says. “Now I’m a candidate running to make history.”

SHUCHITA PATEL

Democrat running for Forsyth County Com- mission, District 3

A finance professional with thirty years in North Georgia, of which 14 years in Forsyth County, classically trained in Bharatanatyam, and a longtime IACA community member. Patel is running against an incumbent she accuses of systematic conflicts of interest—developer donations followed by pro-development votes against staff recommendations. Her stated motivation is, in her own words, “rage.” “I spent my career in finance, not politics,” she says. “But if the last several years have proven anything, it’s that the barrier to entry isn’t competence—it’s audacity. I have both.”

VISHAL SRIVASTAVA

Democrat Forsyth County Board of Edu- cation, District 5

A 25-year veteran in Data & AI running for the school board through the lens of performance management. Forsyth is ranked #3 in Georgia with a 96% graduation rate — but the U.S. ranks 26th globally in math. His goal: use Forsyth’s demographic transformation as a competitive advantage, pushing AI literacy, STEM pathways, competitive teacher pay, and a parent-partner approach to gover- nance. His campaign philosophy: “We don’t lower the bar for anyone; we build better ladders for everyone.”

MATHEW PHILIP

Republican running for Georgia House of Representatives, District 25

A corporate leader, pastor, and HOA board president rooted in Forsyth County for over fourteen years, running as a Republican in a district where roughly half of registered voters are independents. Philip’s bet is on practical competence over ideology—a listening-first approach shaped by years leading businesses, congregations, and community boards. His priorities: affordability, tax relief, healthcare access, and responsible growth management. His campaign strategy: “Put people first and work together.”

SHELLY ABRAHAM

Democrat running for Georgia House of Repre- sentatives, District 99

A mechanical engineer and son of Indian immigrants, raised in Georgia for 20 years. Running as a Democrat on housing affordability, safer communities, and education access out of Suwanee. “I’m not a natural politician,” he says, “but I have been paying attention to politics for years. I’ve been searching for higher-quality candidates to present themselves, but I realized that I could be the change.”

IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER

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• Election Day – May 19, 2026
• Runoff Election, if needed – June 16, 2026

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