Ethnic Media Services Highlights Minority Candidates in Midterms

By Jawahar Malhotra

HOUSTON: This Midterm election cycle has seen a huge slate of minority candidates vying for seats all across the country and many organizations have been highlighting their races as well as supporting them in whichever way they can. Visibility of these candidates remains a huge concern and help from these groups has played a key part of the strategy to build up diversity in elected offices nationally.

Dr. Suleman Lalani

One such group is Ethnic Media Services, a San Francisco based organization composed of well regarded journalists and activists all brought together with one thought in mind: “how to enhance the capacity of ethnic news outlets to inform and engage diverse audiences on broader public issues with the goal of building a more inclusive participatory democracy”, according to their website www.ethnicmediaservices.org.

EMS does this outreach by convening roundtable briefings that bring ethnic media together; organizing professional training and fellowships for ethnic media reporters; coordinating social media and marketing campaigns that enable government agencies, foundations, nonprofits and public affairs firms to customize messaging; producing, translating and syndicating multilingual, original news stories to ethnic news media partners and developing communications projects with underserved groups that deepen their engagement.

Sonia Rash

Towards that end, during these past elections, EMS organized a Zoom briefing on Thursday, October 27 from 1 to 2 pm for many ethnic media outlets in Houston to promote five minority candidates running for various offices. Each had several minutes to present their platforms and then participated in a Q&A session. What was impressive was the passion that led these candidates to jump into the races despite the increased effort and stress of fundraising and meeting voters that left little family time.

These candidates were Dr. Suleman Lalani – Democratic State Representative, Texas House District 76; Sonia Rash – Democratic Candidate for Justice of the Peace Precinct 3, Fort Bend County; Cameron "Coach Cam" Campbell – Democratic State Representative Candidate for Texas House District 132; Daniel Lee – Democratic State Representative Candidate for Texas House District 26 and Dr. Carla Wyatt – Harris County Treasurer Candidate, Houston, Texas.

Cameron Campbell

After the elections, Lalani, Rash and Wyatt were declared winners for their seats. The meeting was moderated by EMS Executive Director Sandy Close, a veteran journalist and correspondent who has worked on stories across the world whose work has received several awards.