The Republican Party of Virginia is promising to pump $100,000 into races in a bid to draw women and minorities. I hate to break it to my friends across the aisle, but while the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) paints a rosy picture of the Republican bench, the Virginia GOP has a long way to go before it can claim to be the party of "diversity."
An RSLC board member claims that "while the Democrats run mostly white men in key Virginia races this year, the Republicans' impressive slate of qualified, conservative and diverse men and women running for the House of Delegates is reflective of where our party is today."
What? Has he looked at a single Democratic candidate running for the House, or any office for that matter?
Let me first stress that diversity is not just about numbers. It’s about policies that help women, people of color and Virginia families of every socioeconomic level get ahead. But if numbers are the game the RSLC wants to play, it loses. Handily.
In House races, statistics don't lie:
• Democratic women in contested seats: 17; Republican women in contested seats: 4.
• Democratic people of color in contested seats: 9; Republican people of color in contested seats: 5.
On the Senate side, the problem is even more dire — there was greater diversity in the Democratic primary for the 29th District Senate seat in Loudoun County than Republicans have in their entire caucus.
• Democratic women in contested seats: 7; Republican women in contested seats: 3.
• Democratic people of color in contested seats: 4; Republican people of color in contested seats: 0.
Diversity is about more than appearance, but one glance at a picture of the respective Democratic and Republican caucuses shows how utterly upside-down it is to claim that Republicans, not Democrats, are the party of diversity. For starters, six of 67 members of the House Republican Caucus are either women or people of color. That's 8 percent of the caucus. Women and minorities make up a majority of the House Democratic Caucus.
On the Senate side, while Democrats have slightly more than half of the caucus represented by women, people of color or lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, there's only one Republican senator who is not a white male.
The Republican Party consistently struggles with issues of insensitivity, from the Republican Party of Virginia chairman's anti-Semitic joke at a rally to anti-woman and anti-immigrant insults from presidential contenders. On the policy side, the most recent General Assembly session saw Republican legislation to exclude Virginia's "dream" children from in-state tuition and to further restrict women's health-care decisions. Republicans continued to block expanding Medicaid to 400,000 uninsured Virginians. This last one really hits home, as the Commonwealth Fund reported that Virginia ranked second-worst among states for the number of vulnerable minorities who had to go without health care in the past year because of the high cost.
And the GOP’s prized recruits want more of the same.
We must always work to become more inclusive and improve the diversity of thought, background (socioeconomic and otherwise), perspective and experience. The Democratic Party is committed to that at every level of recruitment, as well as every aspect of policies and ideas the party pushes forward.
The Virginia GOP wants you to look at a few candidates and forget about any of the substance or policy that the party espouses. Finding a few women and candidates of color is a nice first step. But if Virginia’s Republican Party wants to truly be the party of the future, it needs to earn it with words, actions and policies.
A party isn’t diverse just because it says so.
The writer, a Democrat, represents the 49th District in the Virginia House.
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