The New York City mayoral race was not the only contest in which a Muslim from a South Asian family made history on Election Day. In Virginia, Ghazala Hashmi, a Democrat who was elected as lieutenant governor, became the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in any state.
“This was possible,” she said in her victory speech on Tuesday, “because of the depth and breadth of the opportunities made available in this country and in this commonwealth.”
Ms. Hashmi, now 61, arrived in the United States as a child, coming from Hyderabad, India, with her mother and brother to join her father, who was teaching at Georgia Southern University in Savannah. She went on to earn a doctorate in literature at Emory University and for nearly three decades worked as a professor and administrator at colleges in Virginia.
But, she said in an interview in 2020, she had faced a “moment of crisis” when she saw how Muslims were being treated under the first Trump administration. In 2019, she ran for a State Senate seat held by a Republican and won in an upset, becoming the first Muslim woman in the Virginia State Senate.
“I first was compelled to run for office because I wanted to respond rather than quietly observe the targeting and the scapegoat of marginalized communities,” Ms. Hashmi said on Tuesday night. “I decided to run for public office because no one in this country should be made to feel as though they are not welcome in their neighborhoods or in their own communities.”
Six years later, she made history again.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
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