Background and career
Rohit Khanna (born September 13, 1976) is an American politician and attorney serving as the U.S. representative from California's 17th congressional district since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he defeated eight-term incumbent Democratic representative Mike Honda in the 2016 general election, after first running for the same seat in 2014. Khanna also served as the deputy assistant secretary in the United States Department of Commerce under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011. Khanna was born in Philadelphia to Indian parents. A self-described "progressive capitalist", Khanna has called for a "new economic patriotism" as a governing philosophy. Khanna has championed the abundance agenda. Khanna is a multimillionaire with a net worth estimated variously between $27 million and over $340 million in 2026. Khanna endorsed Bernie Sanders for president of the United States in 2016 and co-chaired Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign. He is a member of the bipartisan Congressional YIMBY Caucus, which advocates increasing housing supply to address housing affordability challenges. He founded and co-chairs the Congressional Antitrust Caucus, and has advocated stricter antitrust scrutiny of dominant technology firms and major mergers involving the tech sector. In 2025 and 2026 Khanna drew broader national attention through town halls in Republican-held districts and appearances in early-voting presidential states, leading several national outlets to describe him as a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2028 United States presidential election.
Rohit Khanna was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 13, 1976, into an Indian family. His parents immigrated to the United States from the Indian state of Punjab in 1968. His father is a chemical engineer who is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and of the University of Michigan, while his mother is a former schoolteacher. Khanna's maternal grandfather, Amarnath Vidyalankar, was a politician, social worker, and journalist. Born in Bhera, in the Shahpur District of British Punjab (later Punjab, Pakistan), he was part of the Indian independence movement and spent two years in jail in the pursuit of Dominion status for India. Raised in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Khanna has said that his parents impressed on him the obligations of being a first-generation American-born citizen. He has also said that summer visits to New Delhi helped shape his connection to his Indian heritage and that conversations with his maternal grandfather were formative. Khanna is a graduate of Council Rock High School, a public school in Newtown, in 1994. Later profile coverage described him as the valedictorian of his class. By high school, he had already developed an interest in politics; in a 2022 interview, Khanna said that his first published writing was a letter to the editor of a local Bucks County newspaper opposing U.S. involvement in the Gulf War. He then received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in economics from the University of Chicago in 1998, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In a 2022 interview, Khanna said that the university's Core Curriculum and his study of political philosophy helped instill what he described as "intellectual humility" and shaped his thinking about pluralism and the American political tradition. He received a Juris Doctor (JD) from Yale Law School in 2001.
As a student at the University of Chicago, Khanna worked for William D. Burns walking precincts during Barack Obama's first campaign for the Illinois Senate in 1996. Khanna interned for Jack Quinn when Quinn served as the chief of staff for Vice President Al Gore. As a sophomore, he interned at former president Jimmy Carter's Carter Center. After graduating from law school, Khanna clerked for federal appeals judge Morris S. Arnold in Little Rock, Arkansas. In private practice, he specialized in intellectual property law. In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Khanna deputy assistant secretary of the United States Department of Commerce. In that role, Khanna led international trade missions and worked to increase United States exports. He was later appointed to the White House Business Council. Khanna left the Department of Commerce in August 2011 to join Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a law firm in Silicon Valley. As part of a pro bono legal team, Khanna filed an amicus brief on behalf of 13 of the country's leading social scientists in the Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas (2016). That brief included research on how a diverse educational environment benefits students and cited studies showing that race-conscious admissions policies (known as affirmative action) used by institutions such as the University of Texas result in a more diverse student body. Khanna was a visiting lecturer of economics at Stanford University from 2012 to 2016, taught law at the Santa Clara University School of Law, and taught American jurisprudence at San Francisco State University. In 2012, he published a book on American competitiveness in business, Entrepreneurial Nation: Why Manufacturing is Still Key to America's Future. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Khanna to the California Workforce Investment Board in 2012. Khanna served on the board of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte from 2006 until 2013 while on leave from the Obama Administration. In 2014, Khanna left Wilson Sonsini for his first campaign for California's 17th congressional district seat. Khanna finished second in the top-two primary behind seven-term incumbent and fellow Democrat Mike Honda. He lost a close general election to Honda, but garnered substantial support from the Silicon Valley tech industry. Khanna then took a job as vice president of strategic initiatives at Smart Utility Systems. In 2016, Khanna challenged Honda again. Former President Carter made a rare primary endorsement supporting Khanna's Congressional campaign in 2016. He narrowly finished first in the top-two primary over Honda, then defeated him in the general election by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, with significant support from venture capital firms and tech companies. Khanna was reelected in 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024. As of August 2025, Khanna was working with YouTubers "Schlep" and "KreekCraft" to exercise Roblox's child safety after "Schlep" was terminated and sent a cease and desist letter for catching child predators on the site.
Khanna ran one of the nation's first anti-Iraq war campaigns for the United States House of Representatives in the 2004 elections, unsuccessfully challenging Tom Lantos in the Democratic primary in California's 12th congressional district. He received endorsements from prominent officials, including Matt Gonzalez, and newspapers, including the San Mateo County Times, but lost.
Khanna intended to run for the House in California's 15th congressional district in the 2012 election, hoping to succeed Democrat Pete Stark after Stark's eventual retirement, although stating he would not challenge Stark directly. He raised $1.2 million, receiving support from Governor Brown, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, Representatives Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo, and businessmen Vinod Khosla and John W. Thompson. Khanna's fundraising total for the fourth quarter of 2011 exceeded that of all but two House candidates nationwide. Eric Swalwell defeated Stark in 2012.
On April 2, 2013, Khanna announced that he would challenge Mike Honda in California's 17th congressional district in the 2014 midterm elections. He assembled a campaign team composed of top members of President Barack Obama's reelection team, including Jeremy Bird, Obama's 2012 national field director, and Steve Spinner, one of Obama's top three fundraisers. Khanna was backed by executives at Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and other tech companies, and by the editorial boards of the San Jose Mercury News, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune, and the Contra Costa Times. He earned the endorsement of San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, and also won the endorsement of the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. A lawsuit was filed before the Sacramento County Superior Court alleging that Khanna had recruited candidates with similar names to enter the race as Republicans to split the Republican vote three ways. On March 28, 2014, the Court disqualified one of the candidates and ruled that Khanna had no connection with the incident. On November 4, 2014, incumbent congressman Honda defeated Khanna 69,561 (51.8%) votes to 64,847 (48.2%). Khanna's campaign was funded by many of the technology industry's biggest names, including Yahoo! chief executive Marissa Mayer, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Napster founder Sean Parker, investor Marc Andreessen, and venture capitalist Steve Westly.
