President Obama's camp tries to diversify

By JONATHAN ALLEN and JOSEPH WILLIAMS | 4/18/12 6:29 PM EDT

President Barack Obama’s team is looking to hire more African-Americans, a search that has stirred a debate among black Democrats about Obama’s record on diversity and its implications for his reelection.

Stefanie Brown, director of the campaign’s African American Vote program, wrote in an “urgent” March 21 email to contacts in the black community that “The Obama for America campaign is in the process of really staffing up in states around the country, and I need your help to find qualified, African American candidates for some of these positions.” The email, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO, notes that “this is a fast moving process and your (quick) support is greatly appreciated.”


Campaign manager Jim Messina created and runs a working group “dedicated to ensuring that we are looking at a diverse pool of applicants for jobs” — both African-Americans and members of other minority groups — a campaign official told POLITICO, and Latinos for Obama was launched on Wednesday.

The diversity push — and specifically the effort to hire African-Americans — isn’t just on the campaign side: In Washington, four officials from the White House personnel office and lobbying shop met Monday with chiefs of staff for members of the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss building a better pipeline for black staffers to move from the Capitol to the White House. An administration official emphasized that the White House reached out to the CBC, not the other way around, and said the meeting was coincidental to the campaign’s efforts.

The race to stock up on black talent is a welcome development among Washington’s African-American power elite — and one that critics say is three years late in coming. The cynical take, offered up by black Democratic sources outside Obama’s camp: The president and his aides have focused their attention on hiring more African-Americans because they are worried about black turnout on Election Day.

It’s not that anyone expects black voters to suddenly rush to Mitt Romney — they won’t — but African-American turnout could be pivotal in several swing states Obama won in 2008 that show signs of being more competitive in 2010 because of shifts among white independents. Florida, North Carolina and Virginia rank in the top 10 states in total African-American population; and Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan are in the top 15.

Exit polls show that roughly 1 million African Americans voted in the presidential election in North Carolina in 2008. Obama’s margin of victory: 14,000 votes.

“There’s a significant amount of concern,” one chief of staff to a black member of Congress told POLITICO. The excitement of the 2008 campaign is gone, this aide said, and African-American voters haven’t seen much improvement on issues such as an unemployment rate about double that for whites. The Obama campaign has time to reignite the enthusiasm, the aide said, “if they adjust and expand their message.”

The bar may be higher for Obama than for other presidents.

“I think this administration is expected to have the greatest diversity program just given the fact that President Obama is the first African-American president, and he’s not run from issues of diversity,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “The question would be ‘What do the facts say about it?’ and I think they would be the best judge of those numbers. You can always do better. And this administration is no different. You can talk diversity, which is good, but a better barometer is whatever the facts say.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0412/75323.html#ixzz1sUKbltPb