The first Armenian immigrants have settled in the United States still in the 18th century. Especially in 1915, after the Armenian Genocide, the great immigration of Armenians to the United States began. The second huge flow of migration took place after the World War II and is still on with some interruptions.
Currently, the number of Armenians in the United States is about 2 million people who mostly inhabit in California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas and other states. Almost half of them are centralized in 6 major cities (with their suburbs): Los Angeles, New York, Detroit, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Being owners of various occupations, Americans-based Armenians are quite actively involved in the political sphere too by occupying various responsible posts in the state and local government agencies. For example, George Deukmejian was the governor of the biggest US state of California for a long time (1981-1992). Three of the current 4 members of the City Council of the city of Glendale, California, are Armenians (almost 90% (about 170 thousand) of the population), and Larry Zarian, Rafi Manoukian, Bob Yousefian, Ara Najarian, and Zareh Sinanyan were mayors in different years.
However, the recent US presidential and local government elections showed that the American Armenians are passive and have registered a regress in active politics. In particular, in the US presidential elections, the American Armenians have adopted a neutral position and were not expressing active posture to any of the presidential candidates. This can be explained both by greedy promises of the candidates and the lack of attention thereof to the Armenian problems, particularly the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Everyone remembers presidential candidate Barack Obama’s pledge to Americans to officially recognize the Armenian Genocide right after being elected a president which remained a promise, hence the distrust and disappointment over the candidates were appropriate.
The next vivid proof of American Armenians’ political passivity were the elections of the California State Assembly this year when California nominated a young politician Ardashes (Ardy) Kassakhian who having a large number of adherents won the second place on August 7 in preliminary elections, but in the main elections on November 8, he lost the opponent with a rather big differences in the votes.
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What is the problem? Do the everyday living problems not allow the American Armenian actively to be engaged in politics, or the change in generation of politicians inspires distrust? Are the ordinary citizens tired of empty promises made by the candidates, or the third parties hamper the American Armenian politicians to reach success? All these options are possible and real. In particular, with regard to the third parties we can state that the name of Turkish public and political figure, Fethullah Gülen , known for his Armenophobia was actively circulating in the Los Angeles National Assembly elections, who according to reliable sources had spent huge amount of money for organizing Ardy Kassakhian’s main political opponent’s campaign and was even financing the implementation of a black PR against Kassakhian which produced its results.
As for the change of political generation, we can note that there are still young but politically quite mature personalities who have received an excellent US education, holding different responsible positions and are able to unite the American Armenians and represent their interests in the US state and local government agencies. One of them is Samuel (Sam) Kbushyan living in Los Angeles who despite his young age has already managed to accumulate quite a lot of political experience. Particularly, in 2013, Kbushyan had nominated his candidacy in the elections of the Los Angeles City Council 13 neighborhood. True Kbushyan lost the primary elections but he ranked the 3rd by the number of voted which was quite a serious bid for a politician running for elections for the first time. Moreover, Kbushyan managed to motivate his supporters to elect the candidate who is now a member of the City Council.
Enjoying a great reputation in Los Angeles 13 neighborhood, Sam Kbushyan has also decided to nominate his candidacy for City Council elections next year.
As a conclusion, we can say that the upcoming local government elections can reveal whether the American Armenians, in particular, the Los Angeles-based Armenians will continue demonstrating their political passivity, or nonetheless Kbushyan will manage to consolidate them and win the elections which will enable the American Armenians to have the representative of their interests in the Los Angeles City Council and solve a number of urgent and serious matters.