Raj Bhakta, former Apprentice star, losing out in US Congress bid

Any chance that there could be a second Indian-American joining Louisiana Republican Bobby Jindal in the US House of Representatives seemed to be fading at breakneck speed with Republican candidate Raj Peter Bhakta being clobbered in his race challenging Democratic incumbent Allyson Schwartz for Pennsylvania's District 13 seat.
 
Early results from the precincts had Bhakta trailing Schwartz by 29 percent to 71 percent.
 
Last month, Bhakta carried off an elaborate political stunt to make a point about border security -- he rode an elephant across the Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border while a six-piece mariachi band played.
 
But though it earned him national coverage on leading television and cable networks, he trailed Schwartz by double digits, which apparently was manifesting itself as the results kept coming in Tuesday night.
 
Earlier, the media-savvy Bhakta, who appeared two years ago in Donald Trump's popular reality show The Apprentice on NBC, and who had raked in several hundred thousand dollars for his campaign coffers from fundraisers Indian-Americans hosted around the country, told rediff.com, "We are gaining steam everyday and I've never felt better."
 
Bhakta said the challenge was to use the immigrant mentality of getting more for less and fighting it out to get 51 per cent of the vote. "I tell you, we are gaining on her (Schwartz) real fast," he said.
 
However, the early results from the precincts clearly showed he was running out of steam real fast.