By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, Feb. 12: In a first, Aftab Karma Singh Pureval, of Tibetan-Indian ancestry, will run for US Congress seat from Ohio’s 1st Congressional district. The young and rising Democrat candidate last month announced his candidacy.
“Today I announce that I am going to run for the United States Congress. This wasn’t an easy decision and I never planned to do it, but these are extraordinary times. If we don’t like the direction of our country, then it’s on us to change it.” the young politician wrote on his social media page.
Pureval, 35, observers say, will have a favourable run against veteran Republican and four-term Congressman Steve Chabot, come November. Karma has already begun attributing his rival with far right poster boy and US President Donald Trump. He told HuffPost, “Steve Chabot has supported everything Donald Trump’s tried to do. He’s become a reckless partisan, and he’s a central reason why politics is so dysfunctional in Washington, D.C.”
Aftab was born on Sept. 9, 1982 in Xenia, Ohio. “Karma is my Tibetan name and Singh is my given Punjabi Indian name,” Pureval earlier told The Lantern adding that his names reflect his mother and father’s heritage, respectively.
The young politician recalls that his mixed ancestry had made it difficultIt for him to fit in earlier on but has since learned to embrace his identity. He earlier said, “I look weird, I have this, kind of amorphous ethnicity. And when you don’t look like anybody or when you look alternatively look like everybody, where do you fit in this world? ”
Karma earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Ohio State University in 2005 and later studied law at University of Cincinnati college of law. He was elected to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts in 2016.
