NEW YORK, July 27: Arjumand Hashmi, a Pakistani cardiologist, has been elected mayor of the town of Paris in (Texas). The overwhelmingly white and Christian town has a population of 25,000.

He was profiled as “one of the United States’ most improbable politicians” in an article published in The New York Times on Friday.

Hashmi was endearingly likened to the opening line of a joke “so a Texan, a Muslim, a Republican, a doctor and the mayor of Paris are sitting at a bar...”, except that he is, by himself, all of the people in the joke”.

Mr Hashmi is all that and more; his sheer genuine caring nature has won him the admiration of sceptical town people. When he entered the race for a councillor, the town “erupted with all the predictable: that he was trying to drive Christianity out of Paris, that he was a rich doctor trying to buy the town, that he would build a mosque, that he was a terrorist”, the Times said.

But today he has won over much of the city. (His first council election was 4-3 in his favour; he was re-elected this year 7-0.) Local citizens speak of him variously as a blood transfusion and a breath of fresh air, even though some in the old guard retain their anxieties, says the NYT.

His success and popularity is attributed to: “Part of his strategy has been to embrace his newness to the city, where he arrived in 2006 after many years in Tampa, Florida. He says that because he is an outsider, no one in Paris is his cousin or classmate, and that he is thus free to govern by reason.

He says he is trying to save the city from the cronyism that he has seen strangle in his own country: “In most of third world countries, yes, there are rules and laws and regulations. But it ends up that related people get things done,” he said. He saw that same phenomenon afflicting Paris. “I have lived it personally and seen why it doesn’t work,” he said.

The Times said in the piece that Hashmi the mayor swept into office with an immigrant’s zeal: planting hundreds of crepe myrtle trees on the loop around the city; surprising local agencies with impromptu visits during his lunch hour; interrupting the “brother-in-law deals,” as they’re called in the South, that gave contracts to the wrong people; using tax abatements to lure businesses to Paris.

All this while serving as a cardiologist and leader of a local hospital catheterisation laboratory that is often the only thing standing between the chicken-fried steaks that patients keep on eating and the deaths they nonetheless wish to defer.

Dr Hashmi owns a BMW (he’s also got a Bentley and a Lamborghini and many other cars) and drove to his mechanic to check on the black SUV he plans to use to host visiting dignitaries, the Times said.

Dr Hashmi, according to the Times, speaks in Urdu to friends or family in front of his colleagues, answering the phones with “Salaam aleikum” at times and at times with “How ya doin’?” His Pakistani accent remains strong.