Sen. Aisha Wahab’s recall movement fueled by ‘non-performance,’ organizer charges

A member of the newly-formed Committee to Support the Recall of Aisha Wahab is Congressional candidate Ritesh Tandon, a San Jose engineer and businessman.

Tandon ran two failed campaigns against Rep. Ro Khanna in District 17 in both 2020 and 2022. He ran both as a Republican but told The Bee he is challenging Khanna in 2024 as a moderate Democrat.

The recall effort, he said, started in part as a Democratic-led response to Sen. Wahab’s Senate Bill 403, which would ban discrimination on the basis of caste. The bill unanimously passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and will be heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.

The judiciary hearing drew hundreds of supporters and dissenters, with many Hindu Indian Americans lining up to explain why they oppose the bill. They called the measure racist, arguing that it would cause people to assume that discrimination is innate to Hinduism, and would result in racial profiling against South Asians.

Tandon personally opposes SB 403. He said he has never identified with a caste, in India or in the U.S.

“Everyone is equal,” he said. Plus, “caste systems do not exist in the U.S,” he told The Bee.

https://twitter.com/tandon4congress/status/1651030853827563520

Wahab, the first Afghan-American woman elected to public office in the U.S., has cited several cases of caste-based discrimination in California while advocating for SB 403. Such discrimination has reportedly taken place at tech companies like Cisco and Google, and on the CSU East Bay campus. The bill is also backed by ACLU California Action, CAIR-California, and civil rights activist and Sacramento native Dr. Cornel West.

“Caste systems are not widely understood,” Wahab said at a judiciary hearing for the bill last month. “This bill does not target any specific community, religion, nor does it create more harm. It simply protects people from discrimination and allows people to know they are protected under California law.”

But the recall is beyond just one piece of legislation, Tandon said.

“This recall is completely based on voter dissatisfaction and her job failure,” he said. “This is about her non-performance.”

“People said Sen. Wahab is not listening to their side [about SB 403],” he said. Constituents feel like she’s writing legislation “about them without them.”

Asked for comment Thursday, a Wahab spokesperson referred The Bee to the senator’s Tuesday statement that she’s “here to do the work of the people,” and will not be distracted by “retaliatory efforts” of the recall movement.

“These retaliatory efforts will not distract me, and I will continue to advance bills that have the potential to positively impact the lives of millions of Californians.”

Beyond the caste bill, Tandon said that the recall committee is “a broad coalition” of diverse constituents, including many in the Chinese American community and Indian American community. Wahab’s other proposed bills have activated people into supporting a recall, too.

He cited SB 573, a bill that would bar legislative staff from becoming lobbyists within a year of leaving the Capitol, as reason to recall Wahab. During the hearing for SB 573, Wahab drew ire from We Said Enough, a nonprofit founded in 2017 to speak out against workplace sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying in professional and academic settings. The group said the bill could force legislative staffers to stay stuck in toxic work environments, or limit future opportunities.

“Sad to see our law makers are controlling people vs working for people,” he wrote on Twitter about the bill.

He characterized the freshman Senator’s time at the Capitol as filled with “broken promises and failed priorities” and described Wahab as “missing in action.”

Many people are still waiting to hear or read a statement from her regarding the fatal shooting of 5-year-old Eliyanah Crisostomo, who was killed on Interstate-880 in Wahab’s district, Tandon said.

“She’s the Chair of the Public Safety Committee,” he said. “A child was killed and not a single statement [from her]. She’s lost her focus.”

While Tandon maintains that the recall is led by Democrats, its treasurer is Thomas E. Montgomery, Vice Chair of the Marin County Republican Central Committee — a self-described “Republican businessman and political activist” who “knows full well what a daunting task being a Republican in the Golden State can be, especially when it’s home to such famous, and ‘well-liked’, politicians as Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Diane Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi.”

Tandon said “Republicans are not involved in this,” and that he hired Montgomery as the treasurer because he worked with him before on his Congressional campaigns.

Wahab’s campaign saw endorsements from pro-choice groups, unions, Democratic Party factions and local and state elected officials on the left. Her many supporters say the recall is a long shot at best, and a Republican grift at worst.

“Republican operatives know they cannot defeat Wahab in a general election, get close in a primary, or win a recall, but they can fool a small group of people that don’t understand the political process, take their money and fool them into thinking that this is a process that has an opportunity of being successful,” said Amar Shergill, Progressive Caucus Chair who has known Wahab since she was running for a seat on Hayward City Council.

“This is a classic Republican consultant bait and switch so they can line their own pockets,” he said.

And while Tandon cites Wahab’s lobbying bill as a reason for the attempted recall, a vocal opponent of SB 573, Assemblywoman Tina McKinnor, D-Inglewood, opposes the move.