Republicans want to diversify their party. One option? Pick sides in primaries
Republican leaders are boasting about having the strongest, most diverse class of recruits to run for House seats in 2020.
But there is increasing concern these record-breaking recruiting figures won’t matter if these women and minority candidates are never able to compete against Democratic challengers.
Many Republicans warn that if these candidates don’t have party establishment backing, through money and endorsements, they won’t have the resources they need to win their primaries, where white men still have the advantage.
The warnings are coming at a crisis moment for the party, which saw its ranks of women and minority House members shrink in 2018 while House Democrats regained control of the chamber with the most diverse freshman class ever.
In the previous Congress, House Republicans had 25 women, 11 Latinos and two African Americans. The current House Republican class has 15 women and eight Latinos. The only black Republican congressman, Rep. Will Hurd of Texas, is retiring.
For the past two congresses, the only House Republican who identifies as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander diaspora is the delegate for American Samoa.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has been endorsing and making campaign contributions in House Republican primaries for years, including to women and minority candidates. Now he is encouraging other Republicans to do the same.
McCarthy even told McClatchy he recently sat down with President Donald Trump to “walk him through” his own slate of House GOP primary endorsements.
“There are a lot of people who will sit back and say, ‘I’m going to be there with you if you’re able to get to the general,’” said McCarthy. “Who are the people to say the biggest hurdle is the primary? I have a reputation for being willing to do that and I am going to give people an opportunity they haven’t seen before.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee currently has no plans to abandon its neutrality pledge in primaries, fearful of the specter of Washington tipping the scales instead of letting voters decide.
Yet some Republicans are so convinced about the importance of helping women and minority candidates early in their campaigns — with endorsements and money, advice and donor connections — they warn the NRCC might have to reevaluate that stance going forward.
“We’ll probably go through this cycle and see how that works, see what went well and what we need to improve upon,” said Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana, the NRCC recruitment chair who is not running for reelection. “If we don’t get significantly more women coming to join here in Congress and maybe to replace people like myself then maybe they should have a different thought process.”
Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the NRCC chairman, told McClatchy that in the absence of picking sides in House GOP primaries — unless it’s to protect an embattled incumbent -- the organization was deploying a new, successful, “all hands on deck approach” to candidate recruitment this cycle.
That approach, Emmer explained, involved asking every House Republican to make recommendations for diverse candidates in their districts who might want to run for office.
“Start giving us names in these different areas in different districts, female business owners, people who have done amazing things in their communities,” he recalled telling colleagues.
The result is a record number of women (215) and candidates of color (177) who have filed to run on the GOP ticket for House seats in 2020.
The NRCC also has a “Young Guns” program, a way for GOP leaders to identify their strongest candidates early without having to make explicit endorsements in primaries. Of the 35 Young Guns named so far in this election cycle, 18 are minorities and women.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who sounded the alarm in the fall of 2018 about the diminishing number of House Republican women, acknowledged the NRCC has strengthened its commitment to diversifying the ranks.
“They have made this a priority,” Stefanik said recently of NRCC leaders. “That wasn’t initially the case in this cycle, but they have proven that they’re invested and I think the results speak for themselves.”
But without an NRCC commitment to intervening in primaries, Stefanik stepped in with the launch of E-PAC, which is raising and spending tens of thousands of dollars on women candidates for GOP House seats she has personally endorsed.
“Early money is key,” she said.
Winning for Women Action Fund, which like E-PAC raises and spends money on endorsed Republican women candidates, is another group that emerged from the 2018 midterm elections with a mission to promote women in their primaries.
“Obviously 2018 was a bad year for Republican women,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, the communications director of Winning for Women Action Fund. “We recognized one of the biggest problems is a woman [winning] her primary, because last cycle the number of Republican women running for office also made history but we had nothing to show for it.”
The Empower America Project also launched last year to train and promote women and candidates of color who are running for office as conservatives.
The group’s executive director, Jimmy Kemp, is the son of the late Republican Jack Kemp, a longtime congressman and 1996 vice presidential nominee. The honorary chairman, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, is the only black Republican in the Senate.
“There is an awful lot of donor interest in broadening the people who are running for office as conservatives,” Kemp said of the feedback the Empower America Project has received so far.
‘We shall see’
An early 2020 test of the power of primary endorsements and investments came on March 3, when dozens of Republican women and candidates of color were up for election in states around the country.
In California, Texas, North Carolina and Alabama, 10 Republican women and minorities headed into primaries who had been specifically singled out or endorsed by outside groups or high-profile Republican elected officials.
By March 4, seven of these 10 candidates had been declared winners.
Five of the winners were women: Michelle Steel and Young Kim of California, and in Texas, Genevieve Collins, Beth Van Duyne and current Rep. Kay Granger, who was fending off a challenge from the far right.
Two Republican men of color also prevailed in their primaries: former Rep. David Valadao, the son of Portuguese immigrants, and Wesley Hunt, who is black.
Tony Gonzales, a Mexican American on the “Young Gun” list who also was endorsed by the Empower America Project, qualified for a run-off on March 3 against another Latino candidate, Raul Reyes.
The results sent a strong message that the strategy of raising money or endorsing in primaries is working. All of the winning candidates had the benefit of significant campaign contributions, party leadership endorsements and at least tacit establishment support.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with House Republican leaders, also showed it was committed to shaping the outcome of some of these races.
Early in the 2020 election cycle, the group began to spend money in districts where strong minority or female candidates were considering bids as a way to signal that if those candidates ran for office, resources would be available to them.
Sources close to CLF this week told McClatchy that the organization was quietly funneling cash into a political action committee to help Wesley Hunt in Texas win his primary overwhelmingly and avoid a run-off.
“Our view on primaries is disaster prevention,” said CLF president Dan Conston in an interview. “We want to promote the candidates that put us in the best shape to win in November and, in a lot of these tough districts, winning the seat back will be incumbent on putting forward dynamic candidates that reflect their districts.”
The next test for House Republican leaders will be how they engage in a series of primary election run-offs where a woman candidate is going up against a white man such as Lynda Bennett of North Carolina, who was endorsed by leaders of the House Freedom Caucus.
Last summer, Republicans faced a public relations nightmare when every House GOP woman banded together to support Joan Perry in a North Carolina special election primary run-off against Greg Murphy. Establishment Republican leaders, including McCarthy, and the NRCC did not take a position — and Murphy won.
Leadership of Winning for Women Action Fund, which spent close to $1 million in support of Perry, is still deciding whether it will intervene in primary run-offs from the March 3 contests. Jessica Taylor of Alabama, who was endorsed by Winning for Women, came in third in the primary and the run-off election in that state will now be between two white men.
No matter how Republicans handle the remaining primaries for top-tier recruits in the weeks and months ahead, McCarthy promised the party would see an increase to its gender and racial representation in the House of Representatives next year — particularly because there are a number of “safe” Republican House seats where the party’s nominee is poised to be a woman or person of color.
“One hundred percent it will be more diverse and it will be larger. I will guarantee you we win seats. And they will be women and people of color,” McCarthy said. “We are not going to be 98% white male.”
Asked whether Democrats should be worried about going up against a less homogeneous field of Republican candidates in November, Rep. Val Demings of Florida, a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee co-chair for recruitment, smiled before she replied.
“I think both sides, Republicans and Democrats, should do all they can to recruit candidates who reflect the makeup of this country,” she said. “And if they say they have the most diverse class, we will see, won’t we?”
CORRECTION: This update corrects to make clear Jessica Taylor will not compete in the primary run-off.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Republicans want to diversify their party. One option? Pick sides in primaries."
