When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) came out to concede the Republican primary on May 19, he told supporters, “I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is running for reelection in California’s 17th Congressional District, stated that night that his “good friend” had lost, because “he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.” Ethan Agarwal, the technology entrepreneur running as a Democrat to unseat Khanna in the San Francisco Bay Area, told JNS that “Khanna’s next.”
“It’s going to become a national referendum on the direction of the Democratic Party,” Agarwal said. “Do we want someone who is on the far-left of the AOC,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), “Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren group of people, or is there a more pragmatic, rational approach to the Democratic Party?”
“I like to think of myself as a Bill Clinton Democrat,” Agarwal told JNS. “Can we restore that?”
The primary is scheduled for June 2.
A Democrat his whole life, Agarwal has seen what he calls “jarring” changes in the party in recent years and considers himself a “lost Democrat.”
“I feel a little bit alienated,” he told JNS. “What I’m looking to do is to provide a home to people who feel similarly frustrated.”
‘Playing up antisemitism’
A son of two Indian immigrants, Agarwal, 40, is from Montreal. He moved to Saratoga, Calif., when his father, who was a professor at McGill University, started a software company in the 1990s.
Agarwal worked for 10 years in finance and consulting and another 10 years as an entrepreneur. He started a digital fitness company and a consumer financial technology company and sold both.
He first became aware of Khanna in 2012 and supported the latter’s runs for Congress in 2014 and 2016, he told JNS.
“Growing up in the Bay Area, you see a young, smart Indian guy running for Congress and you say, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing,’” he said. “He was going to stand up for the community and all this stuff, and so all of us really supported him.”
But Khanna “has gone crazy” in the last four years, according to Agarwal.
“He thinks that in order to run for president, he needs to go to the far left of Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro,” the the governors of California and Pennsylvania respectively, “and he thinks that he can take his own district for granted,” Agarwal told JNS. (JNS sought comment from Khanna’s campaign.)
Khanna is now “playing up antisemitism” and “playing up anti-Indian,” according to Agarwal.
The congressman has been “anti-India when it comes to conflicts related to Kashmir,” is a frequent critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and is a member of the Congressional Pakistan Caucus, he told JNS.
Khanna is “anti-tech” and “anti-AI” and supports regulating artificial intelligence platforms and imposing a wealth tax, which would hit “the tech industry the hardest in the district,” Agarwal said. “Maybe he’s right that there’s where the national left of the Democratic Party is, but his first responsibility is to his district, and that’s not what this district represents.”
Agarwal told JNS that he is running for Congress, because he grew up and went to school in the district.
“I know these people. I know what this district needs,” he said. “I am focused exclusively on this district, and that’s what this district deserves.”
“Someone needs to call this guy out for his hypocrisy,” he added.
AIPAC ties
Agarwal visited the Jewish state for 10 days in 2010 and attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual convention in Washington twice while he was student body president in college.
“The relationship between the U.S. and Israel has always been very interesting to me,” he told JNS. “When I came to America with my parents, they said to me, ‘The most aligned community with Hindus are Jewish people, and you’ll find a lot of friends with them.’”
“‘They think similarly about education and family and hard work and all those kinds of things,’” his parents told him.
Agarwal thinks that Khanna is “choosing to follow” what he calls “a lot of the far-left of the Democratic Party” that “is becoming anti-Israel.”
“In 2016, he was actually quite supportive of Israel and of the Jewish community within his district and nationally and was very proud about his ties to AIPAC,” he told JNS. “Now 10 years later, he has completely reversed course, not out of principle but because he thinks that’s what is needed.”
Agarwal told JNS that although Khanna decried an attack earlier this year on three Israeli Americans in San Jose, the congressman has raised the temperature “dramatically.”
Khanna has given streamer Hasan Piker “all the credit in the world” and defended going on Piker’s show. Piker has praised Hamas often and has compared Israelis and Nazis.
One of the three men arrested for the alleged assault on the Israeli-Americans is 18.
“I kept thinking to myself, what is happening in society that an 18-year-old has such hatred inside them that they want to beat somebody just because they’re speaking a different language?” Agarwal told JNS.
“To me, there’s a dog whistle coming from the top, from our congressperson, who is subtly saying that this kind of behavior, if not tolerable, is not completely abhorrent,” he said.
Khanna said on “Meet the Press” that he denounces some of what Piker has said but doesn’t regret going on the latter’s podcast and would do it again. He told the NBC program that he likely wouldn’t go on Alex Jones’ show but that Piker has “millions of followers and largely what his view has been has been critical of the blank check we gave Netanyahu in the war on Gaza.”
“Are you kidding me?” Agarwal told JNS. “I sort of jokingly but sort of seriously said that if Goebbels had a podcast, he would go there to give him a platform, because ‘we need to listen to other voices.’”
“It’s that level of ludicrous behavior and statements that he has espoused, and no one’s forcing him to say that,” he said.
Agarwal also criticized Khanna for accusing Israel of committing “genocide” and calling for cutting U.S. funding to Israel’s Iron Dome.
There is a “significant misunderstanding between the amount of support we provide Israel and what people think we provide Israel,” he said. “Our total support to Israel is somewhere in the $5 to $8 billion range, and total overseas, I think is around $200 billion, so we’re talking about 2% of our total overseas budget.”
It would be a “mistake” to not help Israel defend itself given that it has been a U.S. ally in the region, where the United States needs friends, for nearly 80 years.
“The Iron Dome is critical not only for Israel’s defense but also it helps the U.S. develop its own technology, because, candidly, Israelis’ defense is some of the best in the world,” Agarwal said. “It helps us learn.”
“Why would you not spend 2% of your foreign aid budget on helping out a friend that ultimately benefits you in the end anyway?” he told JNS.
Agarwal thinks it’s “immoral” to accuse Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“Using the word ‘genocide’ as the aggressor for people that were victims of genocide less than 100 years ago is dangerous,” he told JNS. “I’m not going to say that I agree with everything that has happened in Gaza. I have publicly said that there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza before, but to use the word ‘genocide’ to claim that what Israel is doing even approaches that word, I think, is abhorrent.”
Agarwal thinks it’s “idiotic” that Khanna introduced the War Powers Resolution about a week before Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed and called it a “redundant piece of legislation.”
Khanna brought forth the War Powers Resolution after Khamenei was killed and it failed. “We already have the 1973 War Powers Resolution,” Agarwal told JNS. “All Ro was trying to do is get some press.”
Agarwal attended one of Khanna’s town halls, where he said that Iranians from the district came and begged Khanna to withdraw the resolution. The congressman declined, he said.
He told JNS that he spends a lot of time talking to Iranian-Americans in the district and that they “universally praised” the killing of Khamenei.
If elected, Agarwal said that he would continue supporting Iron Dome and thinks that bills are necessary to address antisemitism and other forms of hatred.
A supporter told him that her 13-year-old son has a teacher, who describes Israel as the “aggressor” in the Middle East. Her son comes home and asks, “Why is our country the one that’s causing all the problems?”
“How is that acceptable that this is what’s being taught in schools like this?” Agarwal said.
‘A better life’
Both Jews and Hindus are immigrants to the United States who “came here in pursuit of a better life for our families,” according to Agarwal.
“My dad came here making $14,000 a year as a teacher and then he started a company, took it public, sold it,” he told JNS. “As a result, me and my two sisters were born on third base.”
“My dad and my own sense—the number one feeling that we always feel is a sense of gratitude,” he said. “He was able to do what he did, because America and California accepted him and he worked within the system and was able to do some pretty incredible things.”
Agarwal also sees commonalities between Jews and Hindus, both of whom see family as “the anchor of everything.” Both also value maintaining culture, he said.
“We’ve seen Indians rise to various prominent positions of power. We’ve seen Jewish people rise to prominent positions of power, because we work hard and keep our head down,” he told JNS. “But also because, by-and-large, America is a country that is good to immigrants and by-and-large, it’s accepting to people through meritocracy.”
Khanna’s campaign has raised more than $11.5 million and as of the end of May, has more than $16.7 million on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission. Agarwal’s campaign has raised much less, just over $600,000, and has about $200,000 on hand, per the FEC.
Agarwal thinks that Khanna is articulating national positions that are incompatible with the district, where he said 20% are Republicans and 30% have no party preference.
“This is a district of immigrants: Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Hispanics, Jewish, Iranian, and I’m spending my time with those groups,” he told JNS. “Most of these people are employed tangentially by the tech industry.”
“Most of these people came here fleeing socialist countries. They came from India and Vietnam and China and places that at some point had socialism that came to America,” he said. “Now, their elected representative is talking about going back to socialism.”
