Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. released statistics on the diversity of his presidential campaign staff on Saturday night, and announced that 35 percent of his full-time staff members and 36 percent of members of its top full-time staff are people of color.
Most of Mr. Biden’s staff and senior staff are women: 53 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
Mr. Biden’s campaign, for months, refused to provide such accounting. The new figures, which they report to themselves, come when Biden’s campaign was in the midst of a big wave of hiring and just hours after Mr. Biden had been pressured into a virtual city hall event about not having provided such statistics before.
Biden has been rapidly expanding his staff across the country since he became the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate in early April, a process that has restructured the build of both his senior staff and the campaign overall.
Biden has faced questions about a lack of racial diversity at the highest ranks of his campaign, as his inner circle of more trusted advisers, some of whom have had his ear for decades, is distorted. Its current and former campaign managers are white, as are four of the people who have served as deputy campaign managers, its three chiefs of staff as vice president (all still influential), and many of its top communications and policy advisers. The Latino and Asian-American political communities have expressed particular concern; Mr. Biden has had greater black representation at the upper levels of his campaign structure.
Last December, Mr. Biden told NPR: “I have the most diverse staff of all those in operation. I’ve always done that. “But at the time he declined to provide any evidence that was true. Politician wrote at the time that rival campaigns by Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders had reported that about 40 percent of their staff had full time were people of color.
In the general election, Biden faces President Trump, who has virtually no people of color among his most trusted advisers. Polls show Biden dominates Trump among black voters and leads widely among Latinos.
Since Mr. Biden became the alleged candidate, he has hired several racially diverse people at the highest levels, including Karine Jean-Pierre and Julie Chavez Rodriguez as senior advisers, as well as a new chief financial officer and a new senior adviser. for financial operations. , among others.
Earlier on Saturday, Mr. Biden was pressured by Amna Nawaz, “PBS NewsHour” correspondent and one of the moderators of a virtual presidential city hall event organized by Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, on why he had to come to that point. release any diversity data from staff. Specifically, he asked Mr. Biden about “not having senior Asian-American advisers. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
Mr. Biden did not cite any Asian-American senior adviser by name, but defended his “diverse staff spanning all fields, and senior and senior positions.” He promised to release staff data later on Saturday, and his campaign did.
“My administration will resemble the United States, not just my staff; the administration, from the vice president to the cabinet members to the main actors within the White House and the court, “Biden said.” It will be a reflection of who we are as a nation. “
Alida Garcia, founder of Inclusv, an organization that seeks to ensure that members of staff of color are recruited into campaigns and political organizations, said the group was working with Biden’s campaign “to increase these numbers in the coming months.”
Garcia added that he hoped the Biden campaign would release data for different ethnic groups “so that individual communities can advocate for themselves.”
