SACRAMENTO (TIP): Amiresh ‘Ami’ Bera, the lone Indian American lawmaker in the US House of Representatives, managed to edge out his Republican opponent in a California race two weeks after the elections. Bera, who had won in a similar fashion in 2012, trailed Republican Doug Ose by more than 3,000 votes at the close of election night and steadily closed the gap as election officials tallied tens of thousands of remaining ballots. Bera, the third Indian American House member after Dalip Singh Saund and current Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, had ousted then sitting Republican House member Dan Lungren in 2012.

“It’s been my honor serving this community as a doctor for the last 19 years and I am grateful I will have the opportunity to continue serving as the representative for California’s 7th Congressional District in Congress,” Bera said in a statement. “If you remember in the contest in 2012, we were tied and after the ballots were counted, we won by over 9,000 votes,” Bera said. Ose congratulated Bera on the hard fought win saying he “celebrates the fact that our institutions and our laws provide us a system whereby elections can be peacefully resolved”. The race was deemed the most expensive one with both candidates spending at least $19.6 million in the campaign, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics.