ATLANTA — Sonjui Kumar has been following Vice President Kamala Harris's career for years. Kumar is an attorney by trade like Harris, and she said she felt culturally connected to the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, so much so that she became co-chair of the grassroots organization South Asians for Harris.
Harris is of Black and Indian descent.
"I think she's a reflection of our times," Kumar said. "She's the right person at the right time for this job. Devi is her middle name. Kamala is her first name. She is very connected to her South Asian history and her roots, and she speaks about it very eloquently. So we’re proud and we feel represented.”
Kumar said Harris's ascendency to face the Democratic presidential nomination has re-energized a race that previously featured two of the same candidates from the last presidential election four years ago. Kumar said South Asian voters and other minority groups will help sway the election.
"I was hopeful, but I didn’t expect to see this level of energy," Kumar said. "The vice president has energized women and the South Asian community; she's energized young people. She's energized moderates, just people who were looking for a choice, a different choice."
NBC News voter data shows that Asian Americans reliably voted Democrat in the 2016 and 2020 elections. That data found that about 65% of Asian Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, but that number had dropped slightly with Biden. The AAPI voter bloc is one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States. That same data shows that Asian-American voters doubled their numbers in 2020 compared to 2016.
Kumar spoke to concerns from some Republicans who have criticized Democrats for attempting to use identity politics to prop up Harris as a candidate.
“Vice President Harris and I have been in this profession for about the same amount of time," Kumar said. "We’re similar ages, and we’ve heard this all our lives. What we understand about being who we are is that you have to be ten times better than the average person who does what you do. You have to be better, you can never be wrong, you can’t make mistakes.”
Voter data from the Pew Research Center shows Republican voters became more diverse from 2016 to 2020, and more Black voters opted for President Donald Trump in 2020. Gerald Griggs, the president of the Georgia Chapter of the NAACP, said both parties would try to court the Black vote. The NAACP historically does not endorse any political candidates.
Griggs said people of color will matter in the upcoming presidential election, especially in battleground states like Georgia, where the margin of victory can be as small as a few thousand votes.
"Both candidates are going to be in for a historic race," Griggs said. "I think there's going to be high African-American turnout on both sides. Both parties have recognized that with their outreach to African-American voters. And so I think turnout in the African-American community will determine the next president of the United States."
Griggs said the developments in both parties over the past couple of weeks would likely turn out more voters and change the stakes in the election.
"We saw an energetic crowd in Wisconsin," Griggs said. "I’m sure we’ll see an energetic crowd in Chicago, and I think there’s definitely energy on the ground here in Georgia. I think people will be voting for their ancestors, for those who couldn’t vote or that first generation who could vote. But I also think people will be voting for their children and grandchildren, because this election will have consequences for 50 years.”