“When I first met him, I thought he was pretty quiet,” said Justin Mirabal ’03, who met Sangisetty during their freshman year. “But I think he grew into a confident guy who was very interested in public policy issues and who really took an interest in his classmates’ lives, and he was very proud of where he was from.”
Sangisetty, now an attorney in Houma, La., said that concern for his region drew him into the race.
“We face some unique challenges going forward with the loss of our coast and the lack of adequate hurricane protection, and I wanted to be a voice to hold the process accountable,” Sangisetty explained. “The community that I grew up in gave so much to me and my family, and it’s really no exaggeration to say that we’re in jeopardy of washing away, and that’s the reason why I jumped into this race.”
Sangisetty credited his coursework at the University with providing him expertise relevant to his district. Coastal protection and restoration, a core issue of his campaign, was also the politics major’s thesis topic.
“[Coastal restoration was] something that I grew up hearing about, and I used my time at Princeton to really delve into some of the issues that are of great concern to our area,” Sangisetty said. “We’re also a hub of energy production for the rest of the country, and I used my time at Princeton to study Middle East politics and engaged in that sort of study to ... learn more about my community and this region.”
David Wilcove GS ’85, the director of the environmental studies program and Sangisetty’s thesis adviser, said he was not surprised by his former student’s decision.
“It was clear to me when I met him as a senior that he cared deeply for his home state of Louisiana,” Wilcove said in an e-mail. “He was also keenly interested in conserving the state’s wetlands, which are so important to Louisiana’s environment and economy.”
Sangisetty said the University has also been important as a source of connections for his campaign.
“Some of my friends from school and Colonial Club have helped me out a great deal — both in terms of advice and financial support,” he said.
Sangisetty, who has raised more than $250,000 this quarter — topping the list of congressional candidates in his state — added that he is excited about his campaign’s progress.
“I started out as just a regular person from this community and this region ... and yet I’ve been able to out-raise every other candidate in this race by a significant margin,” he said. “I’ve had bipartisan support, and the majority of the support I’m getting — financial support — is coming from this district, 80 percent from the state.”
Michael Kissner ’03, now an attorney in Vero Beach, Fla., echoed Mirabal, saying that while he might not have expected Sangisetty to become a congressional candidate during their freshman year, his classmate developed into someone with candidate potential through his years at college.
“I certainly saw, over the course of our four years at Princeton, Ravi grow a great deal in terms of just being comfortable in his own skin and kind of developing a little bit of what you would call his core values … his adult personality,” Kissner said. “So by the end, by maybe our junior year, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all.”
Mirabal added that while some of Sangisetty’s friends initially thought he would go into medicine to follow in his parents’ footsteps, it became increasingly clear during his time at the University that he would pursue policy.
“We’d have these long debates in our dorm rooms about whose state was better, and I remember we used to have these long discussions about Florida or Texas or New Mexico, where I’m from, and Ravi was always very passionate about defending Louisiana,” Mirabal said.
“If he gets the chance to serve, I think that Ravi will make his district very proud of him,” Mirabal added. “I’ll wholeheartedly — and I know a lot of other Princeton people too who will — go down with their mallets in hand and hammer in yard signs saying ‘Ravi for Congress’ if it gets to that point.”
This is the first of three articles profiling Princetonians running for Congress.
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