In an ongoing election year ritual, vegasdesi.com did an extensive research on political contribution from the local South Asian community.

This election year (2012) saw an increase in political contributions from our South Asian community members. In an unprecedented move, Dr. Raj Chanderraj wrote two checks totaling $40,800 to the Democratic Senatorial Committee. This is the highest contribution ever recorded from any one individual from our community to any candidate or political organization. Interestingly, Dr. Raj Chanderraj is not listed as an active voter in Clark County while his wife, Radha Chanderraj, is a registered Republican. This election year, Dr. Raj became the top donor with a total of over $59,000 to the federal candidates. Other big donors are Dr. Nagy family ($30,000), Dr. Prabhu family ($24,000) and Dr. Shamoom Ahmad family ($22,000). These figures doesn’t include contributions for the local races in which Dr. Prabhu wrote $5,000 each to the incumbent Clark County Commissioners and Dr. Raj contribution of $ 4,000 to three incumbent Clark County Commissioners.

As of August 2012, political donations for 2012 election year totaled over $282,000 of which $226,379 (80%), went to the Democratic candidates while Republicans got less than $45,000, and that includes $19,750 contribution to an out of state (California) Indian American Republican candidate Ricky Gill.

The top recipient is Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley ($47,100) who ran unsuccessfully for the US Senate against Republican Dean Heller. Second on the list is not a candidate but Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee with a total of $41,550 which includes two major donations from Dr. Raj. The third top recipient is President Barrack Obama who received $29,711 from the local South Asian community. Interestingly, some of the same donors, who are registered Republican, did not donate to Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, although they were seen lobbying their friends to vote for Republican Mitt Romney. Others on the list include, Democrat Steve Horsford, Dina Titus, Ruben Kihuen, John Oceguera and the only Republican recipient Dr. Joe Heck.

Please see the excel spreadsheets, attached below, to review the full details on 2012 political contributions from South Asian community.