Indian-origin foreign policy and
national security expert Krystle Kaul, with roots in Kashmir, has declared that
she will run for the US House of Representatives from a Congressional district
in Virginia with a focus on core issues like public safety, education and
healthcare.
Kaul, if elected in 2024, would be the sole
second Indian-American woman to be elected to the House of Representatives
after Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.
Pramila Jayapal’s sister Susheela
Jayapal has also thrown her hat in the fray to the Congress from the third
Congressional District of Oregon.
Both Kaul and Susheela Jayapal, from the
Democratic Party, will have to win the party’s primary next year to bag the
party’s nomination for the November 2024 general elections.
Well versed in eight languages,
including Hindi, Punjabi, Dari, Urdu and Arabic, Kaul, the first
Kashmiri-origin person to ever run for Congress, said her decision to run for
the 10th Congressional District of Virginia came after Democratic Congresswoman
Jennifer Wexton, who has represented the constituency since 2019 announced her
decision not to seek re-election.
Kaul has spent her professional life in
the national security establishment from the Pentagon to think tanks and the
defence industry.
In her campaign, Kaul will deal with “three
core issues”, which are education, healthcare and public safety.
The 10th Congressional District of
Virginia encompasses parts of Virginia that have one of the highest
concentrations of Indian Americans and South Asians in the state, like Loudoun
County, Fairfax County and Prince Williams County.
Elucidating on her promises to the
electorate, she said, “The first foremost being is education…The second one
is improving our healthcare system here.
“We have a lot of small business owners
and just making healthcare more affordable and more accessible. So from
prescription drugs to seeing specialists, that is something that is a concern.
And the third is public safety, making sure we have safe neighbourhoods, safe
schools, safe communities,” Kaul, who is in her late thirties, told PTI in a
recent interview.
Kaul said when it comes to national
security, she would take a very strong stance on counter-terrorism.
As a child, at her home in Long Island,
where she grew up, she very often heard stories about the conflict in Kashmir
from her father.
“..that was when my father was sharing
accounts of the tension in Kashmir. I was very interested in learning more
about Kashmir. I made it a point to focus my studies on understanding the
conflict there…,” she said.
“I had a desire to eventually run for
Congress. But obviously, it’s a path. It’s a journey to get there. So I first
devoted my studies, my first three degrees, to understanding diplomacy,
negotiation, political science, and all the theory that you need to understand,”
she said.
“So, I have fallen in the footsteps of
(Congresswoman) Abigail Spanberger (a former CIA officer). There are about nine
democrats who have entered Congress with prior service in the Department of
Defence… several of whom I know personally as well,” she said.
Kaul, who has travelled to more than 70
countries, was born and raised in Long Island, New York.
Her father, who is from Safapora in
Kashmir, came to US at the age of 26. Her mother, a Punjabi from Delhi,
migrated at the age of seven.
After Long Island in New York, Kaul spent
a few years in Wayne, New Jersey where she attended Vidyapith as a kid and she
studied Sanskrit Vedic heritage, Hindi, mythology, the religion.
Kaul shifted to Washington DC when she
was 17 for a college education.
She graduated with a BA from American
University, MAs from Brown University and Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), and
has a PhD in Political Science in progress at Brown University.
A national leader in the defence and
intelligence community, she served as a Director (GS-15) of the Defence Threat
Reduction Agency at the Department of Defence, the Director of Strategic
Communications of the US Air Force and NATO for General Dynamics Information
Technology, and as an Intelligence Political-Military Expert at US Central
Command.
“The majority of my career has been with
the Department of Defence. I worked for a number of large defence contractors
and consulting firms, including Deloitte, General Dynamics, Lidos, and Booz
Allen Hamilton,” she said.
The announcement that she is running for
Congress has created a buzz in the Indian-American community.
“Very positive. I have a great deal of
support from several organisations that back Indian-American candidates, that
back South Asian American candidates across the country,” she said, describing
it as an outpouring of support.
PTI
