No one knows exactly how many Democrats will run for president in 2020, but it’s fair to guess that there will be quite a few. Now that midterms are over, it seems that every prominent Democrat (and quite a few that we’ve never really heard of) is exploring the possibility of a run, and assembling a national campaign team. Except there seems to be one pesky problem: there aren’t enough qualified “minorities” out there to fill senior campaign roles. At least that’s what Politico reported recently.
According to writer Daniel Strauss, the party is increasingly young and diverse and candidates will need staffers who can build coalitions across racial and economic lines. In fact, Minyon Moore, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, says that every 2020 Democratic candidate will need a diverse team in order to be competitive. Strauss spoke to more than a dozen veteran campaign operatives who all agree that this poses a problem because “there simply aren’t enough minority operatives to staff what’s expected to be a sprawling field of candidates.”
On the one hand, it is true that the large pool of presidential hopefuls means competition for hiring on campaigns, regardless of gender or race. And while it’s great that candidates recognize the need to hire diverse teams (hooray, finally!), frankly, this “there just aren’t enough minorities out there” business sounds like nonsense. It is the same excuse companies and other industries use to justify the continued hiring of white folks because they couldn’t be bothered to expand their searches outside of the usual places, or look within to see how they play a role in perpetuating the “lack of diversity” problem.
To be clear, this is not an attack on Strauss’ reporting—though, given that it’s 2018, we should really retire the term “minority” once and for all, since the people he is referring to are actually the global majority. He is bringing up an important issue that needs to be grappled with. He (rightfully) writes that Democrats have done a poor job with diverse hiring in the past, which means there isn’t much of an obvious pipeline to recruit from. And the well-known, experienced staffers of color are certainly going to be in demand.
However, Democrats can and should be more inclusive when it comes to recruiting people from a range of experience and backgrounds for positions, and they need to get creative about what makes someone qualified.
There are talented people of color all across the country working in various fields (education, communications, finance, non-profits, activism, and politics) that would enable them to be successful in high-level campaign jobs. There are systemic reasons why many of them aren’t currently working directly on campaigns—something both Democratic candidates and the party should work to address. For all the work that’s required, campaigns often don’t pay well and the outcomes are uncertain. For people of color who might have student loans and/or don’t have financial support from their families, campaign work means more debt, low wages, and job instability.
Likewise, the children of donors, prominent politicians, business people, and those with means (who are almost always white) are often given cushy jobs on campaigns because of their connections, which means these jobs and opportunities aren’t available to people of color. When people of color do get these jobs, they face barriers to advancement and promotion—including unequal pay compared to their white colleagues, racism (despite myths to the contrary, some liberals are the worst offenders when it comes to racism), classism, etc. The price of working in politics is prohibitive for many people of color, both literally and figuratively. Many decide it’s not worth it and go into other sectors. But it doesn’t mean that we aren’t out there, don’t have the experience, and can’t do these jobs. The problem is that we are all-too-often prevented from getting a fair shot. Therefore, we should be challenging this notion that there is a dearth of qualified candidates of color. There’s isn’t. There is, however, a lack of recognition that the current ways of operating exclude people of color and are intentional.
But this doesn’t have to be the norm. This election cycle saw more candidates of color than ever before running for office at local, state, and federal levels. Many of them had people of color working on their teams. That’s a place to start. So are advocacy organizations. And there are other, formalized resources. But Democrats need to actually use them.
Steve Phillips, a Democratic donor who founded Democracy in Color, a political organization focused on multiculturalism in politics, said his group has a database of minority operatives that campaigns can draw from. Most of the likely presidential campaigns haven’t asked to use it, he said, though it’s still early.
If all else fails, Democrats should cultivate wider networks and use word-of-mouth recommendations. People in that same pool of staffers of color that everyone wants to hire most likely have other friends of color working in various fields that are talented and can staff campaigns. Progressive organizations have staff of color who are doing political work. There are plenty of talented, passionate activists doing grassroots work that can strategize, mobilize people around issues, and turn out votes. This is not as hard as it seems. People of color just need to be given the same opportunities in politics that have long been reserved for white men. If there is a lack of anything here, it’s not people of color with political talent and know-how. It’s a lack of will to recruit, hire, and pay them what they are worth.