Republican politicians have been told to stop calling Kamala Harris a “diversity hire” as the party was drawn into a row on how best to attack the Democratic presidential candidate.
Ms Harris has been criticised as a “DEI hire” by some GOP politicians, after she was endorsed by Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
The term “DEI” refers to “diversity, equality and inclusion”, and suggests Ms Harris was chosen for her role as vice-president and the party’s candidate for November’s election because of her race.
Shyamala Gopalan, Ms Harris’s mother, was an Indian immigrant to the United States, while her father Donald Harris is of Jamaican American descent.
In a speech to a historically black sorority in Indianapolis on Wednesday, Ms Harris emphasised the Biden administration’s record on black maternal health and black child poverty.
“Black women are three times more likely to die in connection with childbirth, and for too long this has been a crisis in our country,” she said. “It is time that we recognise the crisis.”
She said that Trump’s policy plans are “an outright attack on our children, our families and our future” and on “the freedom to learn and acknowledge our true and full history”.
“These extremists want to take us back but we are not going back,” she said.
Richard Hudson, the chairman of the House Republican campaign arm, on Tuesday warned members to stop making comments about Ms Harris’s race, and focus instead on her record in office.
It came after Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican, told CNN on Monday that Mr Biden selected Ms Harris as his running mate solely because she is black.
“One hundred per cent she is a DEI hire,” he said. “Her record is abysmal at best.”
“When you go down that route, you take mediocrity, and that’s what they have right now.”
Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany under the Trump administration, said Ms Harris was part of a “revolving door of DEI appointments”.
“Kamala Harris is a product of this whole system. She’s very far-Left, unvetted and untested,” he told NBC.
Glenn Grothman, a Republican congressman for Wisconsin, questioned if Democrats are only backing her “because of her ethnic background”.
The comments have led to a backlash from Democrats and some senior GOP figures, including Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the house.
“This should not be about personalities. It should be about policy. And we have a record to compare,” he said after the meeting with Mr Hudson.
Kevin McCarthy, Mr Johnson’s predecessor as speaker, said attacking Ms Harris over her race was “stupid”.
“I would say, two attacks I’ve heard Republicans give that are totally stupid and dumb to do is the DEI attack,” he told NBC.
Trump previously criticised Hillary Clinton, the last woman to win nomination for president by a major party, for her gender.
During the 2016 election, he accused her of playing the “woman’s card” to get elected.
“If she didn’t play the woman’s card, she would have no chance, I mean zero, of winning,” he said.
He later added: “The only thing she’s got going is the fact that she’s a woman.”
Some Democrats are concerned that responding to attacks on Ms Harris’s race and gender could distract the party from the presidential campaign.
Jennifer McClellan, a Democrat from Virginia, said the party should focus on Trump.
“While we need to call out that racism and sexism, we cannot let it distract from talking to voters about what’s at stake in this election, including how their policies harm black people and women,” she told Semafor.
Mr Biden said during the last election campaign that he intended to pick a woman as his running mate, but later added that he “didn’t feel pressure to select a black woman”.
“The government should look like the people, look like the country,” he told ABC in 2020.
“Fifty-one per cent of the people in this country are women. As that old expression goes, ‘women hold up half the sky’, and in order to be able to succeed, you’ve got to be dealt in across the board.”
Ms Harris’s race and gender was viewed as an asset by some Democrats during the early months of the 2024 election, while Mr Biden was still in the race.
She has led the party’s campaign efforts on abortion rights, which is considered one of its most potent attacks against Trump.
The row comes after some Republicans have suggested that female FBI agents have lowered the quality of the agency’s work, and were selected because of their gender.
Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, was asked at a committee hearing on Wednesday whether it was “true that hiring women and people of colour means that FBI is no longer hiring the best and the brightest service law enforcement officers”.
He replied: “Any notion that we have lowered our standards or hiring standards is just not accurate. In fact, our standards are as competitive and selective as ever.”
