After Zohran Mamdani, another American of Indian origin has emerged to prominence in US politics. Ghazala Hashmi, a 61-year-old member of the Virginia State Senate, has secured the Democratic nomination for the state’s Lieutenant Governor post, defeating five other candidates. This coveted position, which is second-in-command to the Governor, marks her emergence as the latest American of Indian origin to make waves in the US political realm.
According to the results from The Washington Post-Schar School poll held between October 16 and 20, Hashmi has a 7-point lead over her Republican counterpart John Reid, who is a conservative talk show host. The battle for the post got so intense that when Hashmi declined Reid’s request to do a debate with him, he resorted to debating an AI-generated version of her.
Who is Ghazala Hashmi?
Born to Tanveer and Zia Hashmi in Hyderabad, Ghazala Firdous Hashmi spent her early days at her maternal grandparents’ home at Malakpet. She moved to the US with her family when she was four years old and was raised in Statesboro, Georgia. She attended the Marvin Pittman Laboratory School, which is associated with Georgia Southern University, where her father and uncle worked in the political science department. She secured her Bachelor of Arts in English with magna cum laude at Georgia Southern University and completed her PhD in English at Emory University.
Before entering politics, Hashmi was an educator and academic administrator. She took the post of a visiting assistant professor at the University of Richmond and later became a professor at J. Sergeant Reynolds Community College, where she was the founding director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
Hashmi is married to Azhar Rafiq and the couple has two daughters.
After being elected to the Virginia State Senate when she got her victory in the 10th district seat in 2019, she became the first Muslim and the first South Asian American to serve in the senate while also becoming the first woman in the district. She became the Chair of the Virginia Senate Education and Health Committee in 2024
With rising anti-immigration sentiments in the US, she is seen as a beacon of hope among the immigrants in the state since she emphasizes on the efforts to placate cultural, racial and socioeconomic divisions.
Who is Ghazala Hashmi? Hyderabad-born Virginia Senator eyes Lieutenant Governor’s post
