ANJALI KAMAT: In California, progressive Democratic state Senator Aisha Wahab has made history by winning a special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by disgraced Representative Eric Swalwell, who resigned amid sexual misconduct claims. Wahab becomes the first Afghan American elected to Congress, representing eastern parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2018, she also became the first Afghan American elected to public office in the United States. During Wahab’s congressional campaign, groups affiliated with AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent over $6 million to support her rival, Melissa Hernandez.

Aisha Wahab joins us now.

Welcome to Democracy Now! Aisha, you won the primary pretty easily earlier this year. And during this special election, between then and this special election, groups affiliated with AIPAC spent over $6 million to defeat you. Talk about the significance of this victory and how you did it.

REP.-ELECT AISHA WAHAB: Well, I just want to appreciate my team and the district for really seeing through it. My district is a decently well-educated district. They knew that my record is very, very clear, versus the lies that were spread by AIPAC.

And I do want to highlight the fact that the millions of dollars in this district, compared to many other districts — for example, we don’t have a big city. We don’t have an Oakland. We don’t have a San Jose or San Francisco. And San Francisco is barely touching $3 million of outside spending. We were pushing over $9.4 million, right? And still counting. We’ll see the final, final numbers. But it did significant damage when there’s, in a single month, nearly $6-plus million being spread to spread lies. And I’m very happy that the Chronicle actually stated that a lot of the ads were misleading and were lies.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Aisha, it wasn’t just AIPAC that was a special interest group that was working against you. You also pushed for a bill that would outlaw caste discrimination in — when you were in the state Senate. And you pushed for this law in 2023. It was — ended up being vetoed by Gavin Newsom. But during that time, you faced a lot of death threats and violent threats. And how did you deal with that? And talk about what you were pushing for and what that interest group was.

REP.-ELECT AISHA WAHAB: Yeah, so, there was a bill that I pushed called — to ban caste discrimination, which is practiced in some cultures where you could never educate yourself enough to get out of the caste, right? It’s literally a 3,000-year-old slavery model that still exists today. And there were a lot of people that were opposed to it. They will never say why they were completely opposed to it. They pretend that caste does not exist. But the fact that we had the Senate have to pay for a bulletproof vest for me because of the amount of death threats that I received, rape threats, you know, just a lot of weird things. It was important for me to carry the bill all the way through, because it was the right thing to do. It basically said that in California, let alone in the United States, discrimination of any kind is bad. And I wanted to ensure that all people in my district felt seen, felt heard and felt protected.

ANJALI KAMAT: Aisha Wahab, you’re the first Muslim and first Afghan American woman in the state Senate, and you’d be the first Afghan American in Congress. We’re now, you know, coming up on 25 years since the invasion of Afghanistan and five years since the Taliban took power. Your thoughts on, you know, the significance of your trajectory and what is happening in Afghanistan?

REP.-ELECT AISHA WAHAB: Yeah, you know, I’m an American through and through, born in New York, raised by Uncle Sam in the foster care system. And as an Afghan American, someone who is proud of my culture and heritage, it’s disappointing to see what is happening in Afghanistan, where they are blocking women and children from going to school, really living their lives. I think that that’s going to be a disaster to come for Afghanistan, let alone the fact that the United States needs to practice diplomacy. And regardless of which group is in power, we should be exercising diplomacy and having a relationship, hopefully even kind of steering them in the right direction when it comes to human rights, women’s rights and just civil rights across the board.

Afghanistan is a landlocked nation. It is surrounded by interested parties. They have a unlimited amount of resources that the United States needs to, you know, at least partner with to have contracts with. And Afghanistan also needs other allies. And we have not really exercised that. There are a lot of different warlord groups that want power, that are not the Taliban, too. And I think that each of them are deeply, deeply failed and misguided in the sense that they are not doing what’s right for the country. They are doing what’s right for themselves. And we have seen, even under the support of the United States, that these warlord groups literally raped the country.

ANJALI KAMAT: And, Aisha Wahab, last question, you just have 30 seconds. You talked about growing up in the foster care system. How has that informed your policy priorities, and what is the message you’ll be taking to Congress?

REP.-ELECT AISHA WAHAB: Definitely. You know, our entire campaign was about unity and supporting the most vulnerable community member. Growing up in the foster care system, going to church, living with different types of people, hearing different languages, I realized that at the end of the day, everyone wants stability, everyone wants peace, a thriving future and to live the American dream.

ANJALI KAMAT: We just have 5 seconds, Aisha. I’m so sorry.

REP.-ELECT AISHA WAHAB: And I embody that. I want to be able to do that. No worries.

ANJALI KAMAT: Thank you so much, Congresswoman-elect Aisha Wahab won a special election in California.

And that does it for today’s show. Happy birthday, Julie Crosby! I’m Anjali Kamat. Thank you for joining us for another edition of Democracy Now!