Meet Anoushka Chander

Anoushka Chander is a senior at Harvard College from Washington, D.C. studying Social Studies and African American Studies with a focus on women’s rights, racial justice, and the law. She works as an Assistant Producer and intern at Ms. Studios at Ms. Magazine, where she hosts The Z Factor: Gen Z’s Voice and Vote and helped produce Torn Apart: Abolishing Family Policing and Reimagining Child Welfare and United Bodies. At Harvard, she runs the Future Leaders in Public Service Conference for public service-minded high school students and is the lead singer in the all-senior pop/funk band Charles Revival. Her work has been featured in Vice News, the Harvard Gazette, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Ms. Magazine. She is excited to champion youth voices in every space.

Background Reading

• From Cardinal to candidate: Ashwin Ramaswami ’21 on his run for Georgia’s state senate 
• Biden won big with young voters. This year, they swung toward Trump in a big way
• Indian Americans Become a Political Force, Just as Usha Vance’s Profile Rises – The New York Times  

Transcript

00:00:20 Anoushka Chander: 

Generation Z. We’re the most diverse generation in American history. We’re the screenagers, the digital natives, the Zoomers. We are the youth activist generation and the climate change generation, but who is Gen Z really? Welcome to episode four of the Z Factor, Gen Z’s Voice and Vote. I’m your host, Anoushka Chander. 

On this podcast we amplify the voices of young people in America, from students in Florida fighting book bans to young lawmakers in Tennessee working to end gun violence to young people just trying to make it by each day. Are you Gen Z? Gen Z was born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s. So, we are between the ages of 12 and 27. 

Our formative years were marked by a global pandemic, rapid climate change, rampant gun violence, Democratic backsliding, and movements for women’s rights and racial justice. It has been a while since our last episode. In that time Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, who takes office on January 20^th, 2025. 

Democratic candidates across the country faced a scorching rebuke from voters, particularly young Americans. With the economy top of mind, young voters moved away from the Democratic Party and supported Trump, shrinking traditional Democratic advantages with young voters and leaving the party wondering how to reconnect with youth in the future. 

Over the past few months I’ve grappled with similar questions of how to build the world young people want and restore youth civic engagement. On today’s episode I invited Ashwin Ramaswami to join me in conversation. In 2024 Ashwin ran for Georgia State Senate to represent District 48 as a Democrat facing off against a Republican incumbent who helped Donald Trump try to overturn Georgia’s election results in 2020. 

At 25 years old, Ashwin just barely made the age cutoff to be able to run for State Senate in Georgia, yet he raised double the amount of money as his opponent and ran a relentless campaign. Though Ashwin did not ultimately win in November, I’m excited to have him on the podcast to talk about his campaign, what he learned from his loss, and how we can have hope for increased Gen Z political participation in 2025 and beyond. So, welcome to the Z Factor, Ashwin.

00:02:44 Ashwin Ramaswami:  

Thanks for having me here. 

00:02:45 Anoushka Chander: 

So, you ran for Georgia State Senate at 25 years old with no political experience, which is something that most people would never dream of doing. What inspired you to run and what gave you the confidence to put yourself out there as a political candidate?

00:03:00 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

So, what inspired me to run was really I’ve always been really interested in public service and you know, giving back to our community. I had talked about this a bunch actually on the campaign trail, but when I grew up, I grew up as a son of immigrants. My parents came here to the US from South India in the ‘90s, and I was kind of immersed in both, you know, American culture here but also the culture of the Indian Americans, and what I learned growing up very early on is a value we call seva, which means giving back to our community, giving more than what we take. 

So, I’ve always kind of thought about how can I take my skills and apply it to something much bigger, and I soon realized that public service is one way of doing that, even though I’d have no political experience per se, I did work in the federal government for several years starting in 2020 on cyber security and election security, and that’s when I started to realize that the government needs people who have my kind of skillset, but really after seeing all the chaos in 2020, the attempts to overturn the election, that’s when I realized that we don’t just need talented, skilled people to work in government, we need politicians who are going to do the right thing, and that’s what really led me to think about actually coming back home and running for office, and I think what gave me the confidence to run was just talking to people on the ground and realizing that not only could I be a valuable asset for campaigns, but I was in fact one of the most qualified people to run the seat just purely because of my own background and my ties in the district and the fact that you need someone who’s able to put themselves out there and really show an alternative and people are looking for someone new and you know, who has my kind of background as well to represent our district.

00:04:42 Anoushka Chander: 

The Guardian reported that your campaign was everywhere all at once. So, what is your philosophy for running a campaign and how did your perspective as a Gen Z candidate influence your campaign strategy?

00:04:56 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

I would say that that was a funny quote because I would say that our strategy was just quite literally just reach out to as many people as possible, make sure they know your name in recognition and make sure you can connect with people, explain to them what issues we were fighting for and the issues we were fighting for were simple. 

It was defending our democracy, making sure we don’t have like a fake elector in office, ensuring that we protect access to reproductive healthcare, and that we’re focusing on gun safety to prevent the next school shooting. These are all massively popular issues and issues that I really cared about personally, and I think because of my own computer science and tech background, I used to work in startups and you know when I was at Stanford for my undergrad and I also worked in the industry for a bit, I was just realizing that there’s a lot of ways we can use technology to amplify your voice and amplify what you’re doing, and that’s what we ended up doing. 

We were able to reach so many more people than maybe the average State Senate campaign, and so everyone around me were like Ashwin, this is…you’re everywhere all at once, it’s such a unique campaign, but for me and my team it just felt normal and we kind of thought, you know, why isn’t the status quo more people are innovating and trying new ways of using technology to reach people. 

So, that was a big lesson we learned that there’s actually a lot of unexplored space in terms of innovation, how to reach people, and we hope that we continue to do this kind of work and that other campaigns can also learn from this.

00:06:25 Anoushka Chander: 

Absolutely. So, you’ve also as you mentioned before, spent time working on election security in the federal government and you’re a champion of defending democracy and in your home state of Georgia, gerrymandering continues to be a huge issue. So, how do you think going forward, the state can improve access to the vote and ensure proper equal representation for all voters?

00:06:51 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

Ultimately we have to have representatives in power who don’t just think about the short-term political gain but think about the long-term health of our state and of our nation. We’re not going to have a responsive democracy if we have districts that are still gerrymandering. 

I mean, right now in Georgia, most districts are either very, very Democrat or very, very Republican. There’s very, very few swing districts. To give you an idea, my State Senate seat was not only the most competitive Senate seat in Georgia last year. It was probably the only realistically competitive seat, and that’s just a problem because most of these incumbents, whether Democrat or Republican, they’re not going to face accountability if there’s absolutely no chance that the voters can kick them out. 

The first step really is for I think citizens to make sure their voices are heard, reaching out to representatives, making their voices heard, saying that we care about things like independent redistricting commissions. We want to make sure that every seat is competitive and it’s not just that we want people who are here forever and don’t have to face the music if they do something wrong, and I think finally representatives need to realize that they need to pass into effect reforms in that way, and I think around the voting rights election security, I think very similarly people need to make decisions based on what the experts and research have said, not just based on hunches or which part wins or loses. 

I mean, I think it’s very common that unfortunately that when some people when they lose an election, that’s when they start crying election fraud, and you just can’t do that. You have to respect the system and there’s obviously ways we can improve election security and we should focus on those together but not just selectively do it when we lose.

00:08:33 Anoushka Chander: 

Absolutely. I think that’s a very healthy way to think about how we can strengthen our democracy, but unfortunately in November when the voters came to the polls, the election didn’t go your way, and I’m very sorry about that loss. So, what did you learn from the loss and how did you contend with it as a candidate, as a person, and where do you think your political future could lie?

00:09:01 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

So, what we learned was really that, you know, in politics as in many things, there’s many things within your control and many things which aren’t within your control, and you know, even though we ran the best campaign we could, we reached lots of voters, we were really able to get people so excited and engaged about a Gen Z candidate like mine, and in the presidential year like 2024 we always knew that our fate would be tied to the fate of the top of the ticket because the reality is most people coming out to vote are not voting for me versus my opponent. That’s not why they’re coming to vote.

They’re voting…they’re voting for Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump and there’s these national systemic issues, which I’m sure we’ve seen in the various analyses about the Democrats were not able to reach working class voters, how they underestimated Trump’s appeal to various groups of the electorate, and how, you know, I think this does require Democrats to really think carefully and clearly about how they can make sure that they can reach the right constituents in the future. 

I would say from my experience we even saw a fairly large split vote where people would…they wouldn’t say who they’d vote for president. Sometimes they’d say they’d vote for Trump, but they were like but Ashwin don’t worry I’m voting for you because you’re right here and you know, you’re from our community, and I think what that really taught me is that even though too often than not, elections like mine are tied at the hip with the national level, there are opportunities where when people see you in person, that makes a huge difference. 

There were so many people who were Republicans or Independents who still voted for me because they saw in me the honesty, the integrity that they wished they saw in their politician at the national level. So, I think what this shows is that there still is room for people like me and hopefully others who are inspired by my example to step up and make a difference, and that’s what I hope we will continue to see in the years ahead. 

00:11:00 Anoushka Chander: 

I think that’s so inspirational and just a great reflection on the outcome of the elections in November, and as you said, you know, we’re all reading these analyses and everyone’s got their different opinions, but I’m curious, you know, like as you said, your fate was kind of tied to the top of the ticket and Democrats across the country lost races up and down the ballot and the country overall shifted towards the right. Were there any specific lessons or takeaways you think Democrats can learn from your loss and how we can move forward as a party?

00:11:34 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think in terms of like topical issues, right, I think it was obvious that in this election, the biggest issues which drove Republicans to victory were inflation, immigration, and crime, and I think…I think too often Democrats sometimes just assume that, okay, these are our issues, our Democratic issues,which are abortion, gun safety, and democracy, which is, you know, what we focused on too but not realizing that sometimes you have to also talk about these other issues, and I think that was the problem where I feel like because Democrats saw the facts and they felt like okay, these issues aren’t as…they kind of assumed, that okay, these three issues that Trump was focusing on are not as important as the issues Democrats were talking about and I think that was the wrong assumption. 

I think there should have been a lot more to kind of engage on that turf and I think the other thing is that also Republicans were kind of in a way able to set the stage in advance for this election in that in a way, you know, Trump was campaigning for the past four years, right, ever since 2020, and he’s always kind of been talking about these issues, right, inflation, immigration, and crime, and I think that kind of got ingrained in the American subconscious, and you know, coupled with the fact that you know, Elon Musk bought Twitter and suddenly you have this major platform, which is favoring a lot of, you know, content in that way, I think that really set the stage so that by the time Democrats were, okay, we’re going to start knocking on doors and messaging, people had already been listening to Republican rhetoric for so many years, and I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned about how Democrats should engage in alternative media platforms, you know, thinking about how to really reach voters where they are as opposed to where you most prefer to be heard, and the fact that, you know, it’s not just the mainstream media outlets where you should be talking.

You should be on podcasts like this and others as well and yeah, I think…I think that’s generally kind of what folks should learn. It’s going to take some time, but I’m optimistic. I know that even though a victory is always better than loss, a loss actually helps you to learn more and really make sure that you’re better in the future. So, I hope and I know that folks across the country will take this opportunity to really learn and figure out how can we do better in the future.

00:14:08 Anoushka Chander: 

Thank you so much for that, Ashwin. I think it’s totally right and your perspective is very inspirational. So, I want to ask a few questions about the role of identity in your political campaign, and you spoke at the top of the episode about being the child of immigrants of Indian heritage, and on the campaign trail you spoke about how you don’t look like anybody else in the Georgia State Senate, and from reading about you, you know, I’ve seen you’re committed to representing your Indian American background and teaching other South Asian students about their history and culture. 

So, tell me a little bit more about how your identity as someone of South Asian descent influenced your service work and how you represented yourself on the campaign trail to people who were voting for you who maybe didn’t look like you.

00:14:59 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

So, growing up, as I mentioned, there was a large South Asian community I grew up with. I learned about my own religion and values, including things like seva, giving back to the community. 

It was really only in college where I think I connected the dots and kind of learned about the history of South Asians in this country, realizing that it’s not just something new from the ‘80s or the ‘90s. In fact, South Asians have been around here ever since the 1700s, when actually there was someone named Mary Emmons who was Aaron Burr’s mistress who ended up, you know, having children who became famous abolitionists in the United States, and you start to realize that there’s this long thread of history starting from those kinds of folks to the…to various Punjabi immigrants who came here in the early 1900s, in the farmland people like Dalip Singh Saund, who was the first Asian American Congressperson in the United States in the ‘50s, Bhagat Singh Thind, who challenged citizenship status when it was only restricted to whites and blacks in the 1920s, and finally going all the way to the 1960s and today, and I think that really helped me put myself into perspective and realizing that I’m not just someone who’s, you know, part of a newly immigrant family in America, like I’m coming to this long tradition which has been around since America has been around, and I think that really gave me the confidence to realize that, you know, it’s time to create our own story and a time to show what can this community do and how we can really contribute back to the community because I think for a long time people think of South Asians as model minorities, which isn’t always right, right. 

There’s a huge diversity of people within this diaspora, but it’s also not even for people who are very “successful,” like success isn’t just becoming a doctor, engineer and making money. It should also be measured in how do you give back to your community, what kind of philanthropy are you doing. Are you doing public service? 

It’s not just how many doctors people grow up to be, it’s also how many people end up becoming police officers, firefighters, elected officials, and I think that’s all the things that kind of led me to realize that this is the moment where I can make that change. 

I mean, my district itself has 30 percent Asian voting age population. About half of those folks are South Asian, and that…so that was a very large, important to how much momentum which we got is because there was so…I’d say a lot of this community was so disengaged with politics, they’d never really seen someone like me who literally grew up with them and is now running for office and you know a lot of people didn’t even know what the State Senate was, even though these were people who were very plugged in nationally, very plugged in internationally too. 

So, I’m really proud that you know for the 10-15,000 South Asians who ended up voting this election in my district, I know that a large portion of them now know a ton more about local government and how to make a change and an impact than before.

00:18:02 Anoushka Chander: 

Wow. Well, I’m sure your community is incredibly proud of you, and I also just really appreciate the history that you gave, and you know, making sure that people know that Indian Americans and South Asian communities have been a part of American history for a really long time, not only, you know, in the recent waves of immigration in the 1960s and ‘70s, and I…I also am of an American Indian descent.

I’m an Indian American woman and was raised in a very similar culture I think to how you’re describing your upbringing of focus on public service, a focus on, you know, getting involved in your community and speaking up for what is right. 

So, I really appreciate that perspective, Ashwin, and I also want to ask. You know there’s another big conversation that’s been happening in Democratic circles recently, which is about the role of young men and what’s happening with young men in the Democratic Party. 

So, what has your experience as a young man been in political circles as we’ve had these post-election conversations focus on how young men are feeling increasingly isolated from the Democratic Party, and you are a 25-year-old man who ran as a Democrat. So, I’m curious what your thoughts are on this phenomenon that people are discussing. What did you hear from young men on the campaign trail and how do you model a healthy form of masculinity for other young men as a political figure?

00:19:28 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

Yeah. I would say I mean, I think a lot of and people in general and young men too I think felt like it didn’t feel like the Democratic Party was necessarily messaging to them, and I think there’s two reasons for that, right. 

One is the fact that like even whenever I would talk to folks about Gen Z outreach from, you know, various other campaigns, it almost felt like it wasn’t always coming from the Gen Z people themselves. Like it almost like it was driven by this ideal vision of like what do Gen Zs want, what do they want to look like? Okay. Let’s put a bunch of tweets out. 

So, it felt like in a way it felt like I was applying a, you know, 2008 approach to 2024, when in reality a lot of things had changed where a lot of young men get their news from you know not just various publications or the ways that Democrats are reaching out to them but like podcasts and you know, these other spaces where Democrats were just absent, and I think that that was definitely a big issue.

I would say though in my district, though, whenever I talked to young voters, young men in particular, they were very excited to see someone like me running and even folks who were…who might have leaned Republican were still like, Ashwin, I’m going to vote for you because it’s time…it’s about time we have new voices in politics.

So, I think a lot of young people just want change in some way or they want to know that their concerns are represented and that the government is not just going to go and honestly just work for people who are much older than them. 

It needs to work for everyone as well, and I think what we can learn about, you know, when you said masculinity and all that is I think being a man is ultimately about leading a life of service and thinking about how can you accomplish things within service of a bigger goal, and I think that that’s what I try to embody in my campaign, and I know that a lot of people in my district were very inspired by that and saw that, okay, this is how you can take your values and how you can take your actions and really align them together but also make sure you maintain that sense of community and humility and really do what’s right for everyone around you.

00:21:51 Anoushka Chander: 

Thank you so much for that. So, Ashwin, even though sadly you won’t be an elected official this year, how do you plan to continue to work on important issues such as healthcare, gun safety, the economy, immigration, all these things that you’ve spoken about earlier in the episode and how do you think other Gen Z’ers, you know, the people who want change, the people who may have voted for you, who may feel demoralized by the prospect of the incoming administration can continue to get involved in this important work?

00:22:25 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

I would say that the work never stops, right. I think once you’re in politics, you kind of never leave. There’s always opportunities for you to make a difference, and I think one way of that happening is there’s been so many folks who have been reaching out to me since the election asking how do I run for office, you know, I’m interested in doing so, and if anyone is listening to this podcast and is interested in doing so, please send me an email at ashwin@ashwinforgeorgia.com. 

I’m happy to share more about it, but I think I’m really excited to see what does the next wave of candidates like me look like really across the country, and they’ll be super charged not just by their passion and dedication but hopefully with the experience that I’ve had and kind of explain to them here’s what I did, here’s what worked and here’s what didn’t work, and there’s so many other ways to stay involved, you know, whether it’s continuing to keep a handle on the issues that are happening and weighing in when needed, talking to folks, advocating for your viewpoint, and whether it’s simply just supporting other candidates who align with your values. 

You know, as I said, as you mentioned, like we ended up raising one million dollars, which was unprecedented for our State Senate race and really a State Senate race in Georgia, and there’s so many people we activated who had never given to a campaign before, who gave to me because they saw potential in me, and I think doing that kind of work at a larger scale can really pay huge dividends because we were able to empower a lot of candidates who otherwise wouldn’t have the resources to actually go out and speak their truth and say this is what we have to do, and it’s…that’s one thing I realize more than ever in this campaign is that individual people have a lot of power, especially people who…even people who work in the private sector and who may not work in government, you’re able to support the candidates you like and you’re able to bring your own friend group and your network to really support them and that’s something we’re all obligated to do. 

I think what we’ve seen since this November is that we can’t sit anything out. We have to work even harder to really reach out to the right people and ensure that they can make a difference, which we want to see.

00:24:35 Anoushka Chander: 

Thank you, Ashwin. That is extremely inspirational. You’re an inspiration to me and I’m sure to all of our listeners and to so many young people. I have one final question for you. It’s just a fun question that I ask all of the guests on the podcast and I’m sure you’ll have an answer to this, but I always ask our guests to tell me what their political walk-on-stage song would be. 

So, like, for example, Kamala Harris’ was Freedom by Beyonce. Every time she walked on stage she had Freedom playing. So, when you were a candidate, was there a song that like got you hyped up or that you were excited to walk on stage to when you were about to give a speech?

00:25:14 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

There actually was a song. I think most of my…I didn’t have such fancy rallies. So, _____ 00:25:20 music for a stage. There was a time when I did walk on a stage and some really good music played, but I forgot what it was. So, I need a pass in terms of what my walk-in-stage music was, but you know I think it would be kind of cool if in the future maybe if I do a future political run, maybe I’ll walk on stage to like Mozart.            

00:25:43 Anoushka Chander: 

That would be awesome.

00:25:44 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

Yeah. I think it would be really cool. 

00:25:45 Anoushka Chander: 

Man.

00:25:48 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

Yeah. It’s very unique and people will realize that like because I think ultimately in politics is all about being yourself and being authentic and showing that, you know, this is who you are and you’re not afraid to say that. Those are the people who voters want because voters want someone who’s going to tell it straight, who you know is just going to be honest to you regardless of what happens.

00:26:08 Anoushka Chander: 

Totally. Well, I’m excited for Ashwin Ramaswami to bring Mozart back in 2025. Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Ashwin. I really appreciate it and it was great to talk to you.

00:26:19 Ashwin Ramaswami: 

Thank you so much, Anoushka. 

00:26:29 Anoushka Chander: 

Thank you for joining us on the Z Factor, Gen Z’s voice and vote, a podcast by and for Gen Z. I’m your host and producer, Anoushka Chander. The Z Factor is a Ms. Magazine and Ms. Studios production. Michelle Goodwin is our executive producer. Our producers for the Z Factor include Allison Whelan, Morgan Carmen, and Roxy Szal. Art and design by Brandy Phipps, sound engineering by Natalie Paredes, and music by DimmySad and SKH Sounds. We’ll be back next week with more episodes about what young people across America are thinking, feeling, and experiencing. See you next time.