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Karishma Mehta
Karishma Mehta (Democratic Party) ran for election to the Virginia House of Delegates to represent District 49. She lost in the Democratic primary on June 8, 2021.
Mehta completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Karishma Mehta was born in Virginia. She received a bachelor's degree from George Washington University in 2013. Mehta's professional experience includes being a pre-K teacher.[1]
Elections
2021
See also: Virginia House of Delegates elections, 2021
General election
General election for Virginia House of Delegates District 49
Incumbent Alfonso Lopez defeated Timothy Kilcullen and Terry Modglin in the general election for Virginia House of Delegates District 49 on November 2, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Alfonso Lopez (D) | 76.5 | 19,799 |
 | Timothy Kilcullen (R)  | 19.4 | 5,013 | |
 | Terry Modglin (Independent) | 3.9 | 1,004 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.2 | 52 | ||
| Total votes: 25,868 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for Virginia House of Delegates District 49
Incumbent Alfonso Lopez defeated Karishma Mehta in the Democratic primary for Virginia House of Delegates District 49 on June 8, 2021.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Alfonso Lopez | 70.5 | 4,936 |
 | Karishma Mehta | 29.5 | 2,065 | |
| Total votes: 7,001 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Republican primary election
The Republican primary election was canceled. Timothy Kilcullen advanced from the Republican primary for Virginia House of Delegates District 49.
Campaign finance
Endorsements
To view Mehta's endorsements in the 2021 election, please click here.
Campaign themes
2021
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Karishma Mehta completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2021. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Mehta's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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As a young person, I started my journey through after-school mentoring, counseling, and student teaching. When the young person I mentored committed suicide right before her high school graduation, I dedicated myself to becoming a teacher and fighting to ensure that all students had food, mental healthcare, and safe housing they needed to thrive.
Now, as a preschool teacher I see my students suffer through the same economic and racial oppression I experienced as a child. I took this step to run for office because it’s time to break that cycle. I'm fighting to secure the world my working class immigrant parents deserved, and the one that we currently need. My students deserve a representative that will put their futures over the greed and corruption of the fossil fuel industry.
Our campaign is actively taking on fossil fuel companies, profitable corporations, luxury developers, and the prison industrial complex. We're demanding healthcare, housing, education, and food as universal human rights that are not for sale!- Healthcare, housing, food , and education are human rights, not commodities for the highest bidder.
- Working class experience matters more than political entrenchment. We need leaders who know what it's like to struggle with rent, hunger, and the workers fighting to unionize their workplace against exploitative employers.
- I fight for queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, Black, Indigenous, POC, and working class people. I'm not afraid to take on corporate monopolies, fossil fuel execs, and the prison industrial complex.
Housing: In Virginia, we do not have a housing shortage, but a massive evictions emergency with corporate landlords / luxury developers leading that crisis. 80% of the money supposedly dedicated to "affordable housing" is being funneled to corporate developers. We need to house all people by opening up all vacant units (and implement a tax/penalty on developers keeping units vacant), universal rent control, banning civil forfeiture, and ensuring that people who want to buy a home are able to in the community where they currently live.
1. Opening a year-round district office that engages constituents and coalition partners through constituent services, mutual aid drives, small business partnerships, community events, alternative resources for policing, and voter engagement, and more
2. Having full-time staff dedicated to field work, constituent case work, policy drafting, and identifying new coalition partners
3. Identifying key allies in the General Assembly and working with them to develop strong universal legislation for healthcare, housing, environment, and education
Being a teacher, I would like my legacy to be that I helped to educate and mobilize the next generation of freedom fighters. I want to teach young people how to rise up, engage with their community, organize their workplaces, and dismantle the status quo so they can truly be free.
I struggled with depression, worked 60+ hours per week for $7.50/hr to afford DC rent, and skipped meals to pay my student loans on time. I worked at that job for around a year before I was able to get a job as a Veterinary assistant at a local vet clinic. I worked low-wage veterinary jobs without the protection of a union until I paid off my direct debt and was able to receive my diploma almost 4 years after my college graduation.
The line that's stuck in my head is: "made the world anti-black, then divided the class"
These are my experiences. I was the hungry child in school, the immigrant targeted by police, the tenant pushed out of my apartment during the pandemic because of astronomical rent, and the teacher watching my students suffer these same injustices.
As a teacher, I would love to be a part of the Education, Healthcare, or Labor and Commerce committees to best address the issues important to the people I'm running to serve in the House of Delegates.
He said to me, "Politicians don't give a damn about Black people except for when they need a vote. I worry every day about the racism she deals with in school." He talked to me about how hard it is for Black parents to hold onto their homes so that they can pass it down to their children and build generational wealth that's been stolen from Black people for centuries. We discussed how police plant drugs and arrest the young people creating opportunities for the County to seize their properties and sell it to the highest bidder while their children serve time in prison unable to afford cash bail. He worried about his child's future and said, "I won't be able to afford all of her tuition, so I have to encourage her to join the military because they'll take care of her education costs."
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2021 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on April 2, 2021
