Avinash Iragavarapu - The Indian who helped Trump win ! - TV9

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• published: 09 Nov 2016
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Avinash Iragavarapu - The Indian who helped Trump win ! New Delhi: Chandler, Arizona seems a long, long way from Kovur in Andhra Pradesh’s West Godavari district. Two years ago, it was in Kovur where Avinash Iragavarapu, an MBA graduate from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow, joined the YSR Congress’s election campaign in Andhra Pradesh after quitting his job with HCL Technologies Ltd in New Delhi. Political campaigning and strategy, in many ways, were his natural calling. In his college years, Iragavarapu would begin with “the basic” distribution of pamphlets and knocking on doors to enrol volunteers. It was hard, at times painstaking work, but one that he hoped would ultimately pay off. It did. Last week, Iragavarapu was at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio. You read that right. The same convention where Melania Trump read out a speech in which a portion was plagiarised from a 2008 Michelle Obama speech, or where Ted Cruz urged Republicans to vote their conscience, and the same convention where Donald Trump was officially nominated the Republican Party’s candidate for the upcoming presidential election. Iragavarapu isn’t your quintessential Trump supporter, in fact, far from it. Nor is he a donor to Trump’s super-PACs (political action committees). Heck, he can’t even vote in the US election. But he, like several million Americans, wanted to help Donald Trump “Make America Great Again”. He made his way to the convention as a member of the Republican Party’s delegation from Arizona, a key state in America’s “Mountain West”. He was, after all, the executive director of the Arizona Republican Party, a post he has held since last year. But how did a 30-year-old electrical engineer-turned-entrepreneur-turned political communicator from Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh’s East Godavari district end up with the Republican Party in the first place? This is his story. “My wife works for Intel and was based out of its Chandler campus in Arizona,” Iragavarapu said over the phone. “In 2014, after the general elections in India, I decided to join her for a holiday. I spotted a road sign near our home, which said that the Chandler City Council was going to polls soon. I thought to myself, “Why don’t I give it a shot?”, and around the same time, Arizona was also due to elect its governor, a much bigger race. I sat down, analysed old election data of all the counties, did my own polling. I chose Doug Ducey as my candidate for the primary and wrote to his campaign.” Initially, Ducey’s campaign did not take Iragavarapu seriously. But after a flurry of calls, tweets and emails to those in charge of his campaign, they got back to him with a simple “Let’s meet!” phone call. His work, as part of the Ducey campaign, included a lot of what he calls “data work and polling”, often identifying key areas where the campaign could effectively spend the money it raised. Arizona, for the record, is what is popularly referred to as a ‘Red State’, which in American political parlance means, a traditionally Republican leaning state. “We had a 7-point advantage over the Democrats, which means, for every 100 registered voters, we had 36, and they had 29. We used this to our advantage,” he says. Ducey would go on to win the primaries, and even the Arizona Gubernatorial election in November 2014, defeating Fred DuVal comfortably. Thanks to his role in Ducey’s success, Iragavarapu’s data work would come for praise from the Arizona GOP chairman Robert Graham, who as per news reports is also in contention to replace GOP chairman Reince Priebus in January next year. Iragavarapu’s rise within the Arizona GOP was a meteoric one. From being hired as the party’s data director, he was soon elevated to the ‘political director’ and later as executive director, all within a span of a year. The post puts him directly in charge of running the party’s campaigns in Arizona, across all its levels, including the general elections, congressional elections, senate races and even councils. ‘Making America Great Again’ Iragavarapu, as part of the presidential elections, is now tasked with helping Trump carry Arizona, a state the Republicans have held since George W Bush wrested it in 2000. “There’s a lot of enthusiasm for Trump in Arizona,” he says. “During the primaries, we registered around 50,000 new people to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump went on to win the Arizona primaries, with 47 delegates and 47.1% of the votes. Iragavarapu’s story is rather interesting, especially given his background as an immigrant, a word that has dominated Trump’s approach to making America great again. “I have met him personally. He knows I am from India. He’s a totally fine person, and he’s embraced me with open arms. He has only spoken out against illegal immigration.”