Ami Bera Gets Upfront and Personal Over a Sunday Brunch
From left, Ashish Mahendra, Congressman Ami Bera, Sameera Mahendru and Mini Timmaraju, Bera’s Chief of Staff, after Bera had addressed the guests at the brunch. Photos: Jawahar Malhotra
By Jawahar Malhotra
HOUSTON: For someone who was elected to the US Congress just eight months ago, Dr. Ami Bera is surprisingly easy going and approachable. He put the over three dozen people who came to hear him at ease with his openness on issues, charming them with his easy delivery and smile.
“I am a product of the public schools and community college,” he declared explaining how he managed to get through medical school with less than $10,000 in debt. “But the story now is that many people may now be costed out of college”, he added, “We need to get back to creating ladders of opportunity and have dreams”.
US Congressman Ami Bera (D, CA) visited Houston this past weekend and attended a brunch at the house of attorney Ashish Mahendru (right) who introduced him to the invited guests.
Bera was speaking to a friendly crowd of mostly Democrats who had arrived for brunch with him on Sunday, September 21 at the Heights area home of local attorneys Sameera and Ashish Mahendru, who had previously run for public office but fell short. Bera had been in town for the Hindu American Foundation annual dinner the evening before, then made a brief stop at the Indo American Charity Foundation Gala later that Saturday night (see story on page 5) and was due to leave later in the afternoon.
But everywhere he went, Amerish Babulal Bera, 48, spoke proudly of his Indian heritage and parents who immigrated to the US from Rajkot (just southwest of Ahmedabad, Gujarat) in 1958. Bera was born and raised in California and presently lives in Elk Grove, just west of Sacramento. In 2010, he ran against a powerful incumbent Republican Dan Lungren and lost, only to win against him in 2012 after his district lines were redrawn and has become the only Indo-American in the US Congress. Bera is married to a physician, Janine and has one child, and though he speaks no Hindi or Gujarati, he knows enough words to understand either.
Bera said that he ran on his Indo American heritage as well as the values that were imbibed in him. As he travels across the country, he loves talking to the next generation of Indo-Americans and sharing his experience. “My legacy will be in what the next generation of Indo-Americans do,” he said at each event he attended. “I would like to see more Indo Americans in Congress, and maybe even one run for President in my lifetime”.
The roomful of people at the fundraiser brunch included former Congressman Chris Bell, Judge Ravi Sandill, political consultant Mustafa Tameez and other democratic leaders and supporters. Bera was accompanied by his new Chief of Staff, Mini Timmaraju who hails from Houston but left last year to take on a leadership role with Planned Parenthood in New York.
Bera is on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which includes the first Hindu-American in Congress, Tulsi Gabbrad (Bera is a Unitarian) as well as the Committee on Science, Space and Technology. He is working with the Texas delegation on the future of the Space Program, which employs many Indo Americans nationally as well as at NASA in Clear Lake and encouraged the local community to articulate their thoughts on this issue with their Congress members.
In an interactive question and answer session, Bera responded that, as a son of a public school teacher (his mother), he realized that the salaries of educators needed to better reflect the responsibility they had in raising the younger generation. He believed that education is focused on testing in subjects that are easily verifiable and de-emphasized the humanities which are just as crucial in developing reasoning skills.