Ah, Diversity: 93% Of Dem Senate and Governor Candidates Are White

The last chance for Democrats to nominate a Hispanic candidate for one of its largest offices came and went Tuesday in Rhode Island.

In the 71 races Democrats are contesting, 93 percent of candidates the Democrats are running--66 of 71--are white, 79 percent are male, and 75 percent are white males. That could put a damper on Democrats’ hopes to earn a voter base that is disproportionately non-white and non-male.

Dan McLaughlin at RedState writes:

As distasteful as this sort of racial bean-counting is, it’s impossible to discuss the Democrats’ current political coalition and their voter-turnout operations without race, and so it is worth considering how that is reflected in their candidates for major office.

There are 35 Senate races this fall, including a couple of special elections, and 37 Governors races. Republicans are running candidates in all 72.

Democrats failed to contest one Senate race (Jeff Sessions is running unopposed in Alabama), and in two other races, the Kansas Senate race and the Alaska Governor’s race, their candidate withdrew (or attempted to withdraw) so the party could back a candidate running nominally as an independent (in Alaska, the Democrats’ candidate is actually running as the "independent" candidate’s running mate).For demographic purposes, I simply counted these latter two races as the Democrats running a white male, since their original candidates were white males and so are the nominal independents.
The GOP’s 72 candidates in the same races are not a notably diverse bunch, but there are a few more non-white candidates, more of whom are running real campaigns. Republicans are running:

58 white male candidates
6 white female candidates
1 black male candidate
1 Hispanic male candidate
1 Hispanic female candidate
2 Asian male candidates
1 South Asian male candidate
1 South Asian female candidate

The Republican slate is thus 89 percent white, 88 percent male, 81 percent white male, so the Democrats do have an edge in running more women, many of whom are in serious, high-profile races. But of the 7 non-white Republican candidates, four (the two Hispanic candidates, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and New Mexico Governor Susanna Martinez; South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley; and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott) are incumbents favored for re-election.

And of course, the overwhelmingly white ticket is a bigger problem for Democrats than for Republicans, because it is further out of whack with both their stated principles and their voters. As to the former, we’re used to hypocrisy–Democrats crusading for gender pay equity while the Obama White House and many Democratic Senators pay their female staffers less than their male staffers–but the contrast between their rhetoric and what they do when politicians’ careers are on the line is nonetheless revealing.