Pia Dandiya faces Republican nominee Casey Askar in the 2026 midterm elections on November 3, as she contests for Florida ’s 22nd Congressional District. Dandiya won the Democratic primary on August 18 and is focusing on reducing the cost of housing, property insurance, healthcare and childcare. Both are running for an open seat after Democrat Lois Frankel opted to run for the 23rd District. She’s also made education an integral part of her campaign. Neither Dandiya nor Askar has held a public office before. If elected, Dandiya would become the first South Asian American to represent Florida in the US Congress .
Pia Dandiya stepped into politics when she started working in Senator Bill Nelson’s Washington office. Pia Dandiya was born and raised in Palm Beach County, Florida, to Indian immigrant parents who lived in Jaipur , Rajasthan. Her father, Dr. Rohit Dandiya, is a physician while her mother founded a Montessori school. Dandiya earned a Bachelor of Arts in Government from Harvard University and a Master of Education from Boston University through a program associated with Teach for America. During her undergraduate years, she spent summers teaching English to children in New Delhi. Her aim is to reduce the influence of wealthy donors and corporations over elected officials and make the government more accountable to ordinary voters. Dandiya has made lowering the cost of living a central part of her campaign, with proposals to create more high paying jobs, along with making housing, childcare and insurance more affordable. She has also pledged to expand job training and apprenticeship opportunities in order to help young people prepare for changes in the labor market. She has actively criticized the Trump administration’s tariffs, arguing that tariffs increase the cost of groceries, household goods and other everyday essentials. Dandiya has called for greater regulation of artificial intelligence , raising concerns about its potential ill effects on privacy, physical health and energy costs. She also acknowledged AI’s potential benefits, including more accessible health screenings and personalized student learning. However, she continues to question whether humans would remain in control as the technology advances or not. As the conflict is directly linked to the rising costs for Americans, she has made reducing the cost of living a key part of her campaign. Dandiya opposed the legislation and has argued that the government should ask wealthy Americans to pay more taxes in order to fund public services. Her opponents argued that this means higher taxes for families.
She later served as a White House Fellow at the Domestic Policy Council and the US Department of Education in 2020-2021. She was also appointed to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s P-20 Council, which focuses on coordination across the state’s education system. In 2025, Dandiya entered the race for Florida’s 21st Congressional District but later shifted to the 22nd District. In September 2026, the No Going Back political action committee launched a campaign accusing her of opposing tax cuts for middle-class families and supporting higher taxes.
She was also subjected to criticism due to her opposition to President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Her campaign also proposed overturning the Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, which expanded constitutional protections for independent political spending. If elected, Dandiya has pledged to end “illegal and costly tariffs”. In an interview with the Naples Daily News , she said, “the number one thing that keeps me up at night is that we have no AI regulation. Dandiya has criticized Askar’s support for tariffs and the Iran war, according to a press release by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ( DCCC ). Her campaign website states that the fairest way to protect these programs is to ask “the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share”.
