Sarabjit Kaur Cheema may have launched her campaign later than others, having kicking off her campaign run on Sunday and to just the Indian community, but she’s confident her technical understanding of transportation, her educational career and grassroots empathy will gain her a seat in the newly drawn 20th assembly district.

Cheema, an Indian Sikh, welcomed the Indian community to Raja Sweets restaurant in Union City where she spoke in Punjabi tongue to her cohorts to link support and energy among local Indians.

Cheema told The Pioneer this community will be vital to her election process.

“There is a significant Indian population in Fremont and Hayward and given a recent jump in the Indian population’s numbers, then it is important that we pick up that population and integrate them into the system and the economy,” said Cheema.

Even though Cheema spent her time Sunday emphasizing her ethnic identity and cultural heritage, she believes she is a representative of the wider community.

She plans to reach out into the heart of the bay’s multiracial hub, the most diverse region in the United States, with a “multicultural” campaign kick off in four to five weeks.

She believes people in those communities will react to her positively and she cites two reasons: economy and education.

Cheema is currently an engineer at the California Department of Transportation and has been involved in construction concerning local freeway and bridge development projects and renovations.

“There is a distinct relationship between economy, mobility and the infrastructure. I have a feel for the system. My work has made people’s lives easier because transportation is very much related to the economy,” said Cheema.

Working for the Department of Transportation has given Cheema the opportunity to work “hand in hand with the legislature,” and her participation in non-profit organizing has brought her to Sacramento to affiliate and discuss with state-level politics on various occasions.

She also has a Masters in Governance from the California School Board Association.

Even though Cheema has an engineering background, her second emphasis, education, is what she rather spend her time mostly talking about.

Cheema is currently a board member for the New Haven Unified School District, elected in 2010, and a former teacher in India where she taught science and mathematics.

Her own educational career spans from physics and chemistry to mathematics, presenting a woman with a technical knowledge and educational foundation that she emphasizes will be her campaign platform.

“Education is the backbone of any country; you invest in people by investing in their education,” said Cheema. “We have laid off so many teachers in California and have some of the biggest cuts in education in the country. People are investing in me because I relate to them on a larger platform concerning education.”

Cheema says she is a supporter of Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax plan to avoid further cuts into the California education system. Her campaign emphasizes an importance of future investment into education to spur people’s capacity to “achieve their goals in their lives and help them flourish and become participatory citizens.”

Cheema cites herself as an example of the American Dream, referring to her own history where she spent some time as a postwoman delivering mail in Hayward and Castro Valley from 1995 to 1999 before passing her state exam for engineers.

Over 20 years ago, she came to America where her and her husband, who still delivers mail, were working class individuals trying to make a living.

Delivering mail wasn’t what Cheema first envisioned she would be doing with her education but believes it to be an important rallying point in her campaign.

“I came here empty handed, so I ended up delivering mail. I delivered mail in Castro Valley where I would see rich homes and then in regions of Hayward where I’d see poverty. After seeing all of that I think that I really represent people, I am a working class person. I believe in hard work,” said Cheema. “I am the embodiment of the American Dream.”

So far Cheema has just $10,000 on hand for her campaign but plans to hold more fundraisers soon to garner more cash to strengthen the breadth of her campaign.

She thus far has no social media presence, to which she plans to correct in the coming months. Cheema’s campaign is behind other candidates’, but she doesn’t deny this; in fact she embraces it.

“I wasn’t on the scene when everyone else was campaigning for assembly, so I am coming from the bottom up but I am good at doing that. So this will be a bottom-up campaign but it will also be a voter’s campaign. We are supporters of grassroots movements and hope to utilize those communities for election,” said Cheema.

Cheema is a supporter of the Occupy movement and her campaign manager, Brenda Sands, notes this.

“We are Democrats all the way, we are the 99 percent and that is who we want to work for,” said Sands.

According to Sands, endorsements are currently remaining anonymous.

They claim to have major endorsements that will give their campaign a boost but are waiting until papers are filed for candidacy in April to reveal them.

Cheema will be running against Mark Green, Union City mayor; Jennifer Ong, optometrist; and Bill Quirk, Hayward city councilmember.

Cheema’s campaign hasn’t garnered the kind of local media attention that her competitors have, nor has she been pursuing the assembly seat as long as other candidates, but she believes that enough hard work and determination will make up the difference.