A GOP congressman called Kamala Harris a ‘DEI hire.’ Some caution it’s a sign of what’s to come

(CNN) — In the first full day of her presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris swiftly earned enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination and raised a historic $81 million.

And yet, less than 24 hours after Harris formally launched her bid for the White House, some Republicans zeroed in on a line of attack: her race.

In an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju Monday, Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett suggested President Joe Biden selected Harris as his running mate solely because she is Black: “One hundred percent she is a DEI hire,” he said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion. “Her record is abysmal at best.”

It’s a familiar strategy to political analysts who say Burchett’s comments echo tactics Republicans used during the 2008 election to drive the conspiracy around Barack Obama’s birthplace, and caution that it could be a sign of what’s to come along the already turbulent road to Election Day.

“There’s been this constant debate about mediocrity versus meritocracy. The truth is for most of American history, White men were the only people who were ever considered, it didn’t matter if they were mediocre,” said Democratic strategist Keith Boykin, who likened this moment to the Republican “Southern Strategy” of the 1960s, where politicians relied on racial grievance to drive White voters to the polls.

“(Meritocracy) became a part of the conversation when Black people, and women, and people of color and queer people started to enter into the workforce and society in public ways. And suddenly there became this assumption that anybody who wasn’t a straight White man didn’t deserve to be there.”

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson later addressed Burchett’s remarks during a news conference Tuesday, calling for the election to be about “policies, not personalities.”

“This is not personal, with regard to Kamala Harris, and her ethnicity or her gender had nothing to do with this whatsoever. This is about who can deliver for the American people and get us out of the mess that we’re in.”

When diversity becomes a slur

The backlash to Burchett’s remarks was swift, with many noting that the suggestion Harris could somehow be unqualified or mediocre because of her race traded on familiar racist tropes about women of color – especially Black women – in the workplace.

Before becoming the vice president, Harris had a decades-long career as a prosecutor and was elected to be San Francisco’s district attorney and later California’s attorney general. She then won California’s 2016 US Senate race, becoming the state’s first Black and South Asian senator before being elected vice president in 2020.

But Harris’ experience doesn’t appear to matter to those who would rather rely on identity politics to sway voters, said Boykin, co-founder of the National Black Justice Coalition and author of the book “Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?”

“(Obama) was a United States senator, a former state senator and a constitutional scholar and a best-selling author and they claimed he wasn’t qualified. But then they picked Donald Trump, who had no experience in government, and they don’t even say anything about his qualifications,” Boykin said.

“Kamala Harris, who was a former district attorney, former attorney general, former United States senator and current vice president is a ‘DEI hire’ in their minds, just because she’s a Black woman,” he said. “I mean, you couldn’t get more transparent than that.”

Burchett’s comments “have turned the value of diversity into a slur,” Bakari Sellers, a former South Carolina Democratic state representative and a CNN political commentator, told CNN’s Jim Acosta.

“I’m not sure people are really prepared to see what this campaign is going to be and the depths of hell that many Republicans are going to go to, to sully the spirit and soul of Kamala Harris, not knowing that she’s the fighter that she is.”

A strategy that could backfire

Continued attacks on Harris’ race or gender could ultimately backfire against Republicans, according to Glynda Carr, president of Higher Heights for America, a political organization dedicated to engaging Black women in politics.

In the 72 hours since Biden endorsed Kamala Harris to replace him on the top of the Democratic ticket, Black women and men across the country have rallied around her candidacy.

Tens of thousands of Black Americans joined Zoom calls Sunday and Monday to unite around the campaign to #winwithBlackwomen and #winwithBlackmen. Collectively, the calls raised more than $2.8 million dollars for Harris, according to organizers.

Burchett’s remarks are “energizing the very voters that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to win,” Carr said.

“She is a woman who has run and won and governed on every level of government and is credentialed from her academic background to her lived experiences. So, continue to push that rhetoric and see how women, women of color, and Black women react … and how we will organize against that very destructive and false narrative.”

Ultimately, Boykin said, Harris’ record speaks for itself and any suggestion that she’s a “DEI hire” is a distraction.

“It’s easy to point the finger at immigrants, at Black people, at women … or anybody who is different instead of dealing with the issues that they’re elected to solve,” Boykin said.

“How does attacking Kamala Harris as a ‘DEI hire’ help to create a single job? How does it tackle inflation? … It’s this divide and conquer mentality that they are going to use to prevent us from coming together.”

Harris appeared undeterred by the remarks during her first presidential campaign rally Tuesday afternoon in Milwaukee. Instead, as she reintroduced herself to the nation for the first time as the Democratic Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, the vice president touted her experience as both a prosecutor and a politician.

“In those roles I took on perpetrators of all kinds, predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain. So, hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type,” Harris said to a swell of cheers.

“And in this campaign, I promise you I will proudly put my record against his any day of the week.”

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