Pressler has jumped into the South Dakota Senate race just weeks before election-day Nov. 4, upsetting the balance the Republican Party hoped would help it gain back its majority in the U.S. Senate. The former Republican Senator is running as an Independent declaring “We must end the poisonous partisanship in Washington to restore good government.”
In an interview with News India Times Pressler said he was running on a shoe-string budget and a one-man show and urged Indian-Americans to look at his past record and support his candidacy.
“The (South Asian) Subcontinent has been militarized. We were right on the Pressler Amendment. If we had kept nuclear arms out of Pakistan, I don’t think India would have gotten them. But that’s kind of water over the dam. I am sorry the Subcontinent has been nuclearized,” Pressler said.
If re-elected to Congress however, he said he has not yet developed specific policies for India or South Asia. He also said it depended on which committees he would be put were he to be elected.
“I can’t make any promises. I do my very best job. They (Indian-Americans) can look at my record,” Pressler said frankly. “I think India should be given higher importance,” by the U.S. administration, he said, including at the international level and in the United Nations.
He said he admired India and recognized that it was located in a “difficult” place in the world. “But I’m an Indiaphile,” and if elected he hoped to work with the Indian Ambassador and others to grow the relationship.
“I look forward to eating some idli for breakfast,” Pressler reminisced about his travel to Karnataka. “I love visiting the temples of India and love learning about the culture of India. Whatever happens, my wife and I are resolved to visit India’s countryside within the next 2 or 3 years,” Pressler said.
He put high hopes on the potential for a U.S.-India business partnership. “Even in my hometown of 600 people, Humboldt, South Dakota, we have the Mahindra tractor company, one of the fastest growing companies in the state,” Pressler pointed out. “So India is doing something right.”
The New York Times on Oct. 14 said Pressler could potential upset the Republican calculations for regaining the Senate because of Pressler’s entry and his storied past. The senior Senator served for 18 years in the U.S. Senate, from 1979- 1997. He was also in the House of Representatives from 1975 to 1979. He was the first Vietnam Vet to be elected to Congress having won several medals for his service in that war.
He says he is still the “fix the debt” moderate conservative he was when he served as a Republican Senator. “However, I have become convinced that both parties are locked into a lobbyist-controlled spending and taxing cycle, trapped in poisonous partisan fights while nothing is being resolved,” and he can’t stand by any longer and let it go on. He also says he is running for just one six-year term in the Senate so that he does not have to spend any time raising money for re-election.
Pressler remained engaged with India after leaving office, serving on the board of the leading IT company Infosys. He also went with President Bill Clinton on his trip to India in 2000. Aside from running his own law firm, the Senator was appointed by President Obama as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad; and in 2013, served on the Congressional Fiscal Leadership Council for the Campaign to Fix the Debt (the Simpson-Bowles group).