If you’re a person of color hoping to get hired by a political
campaign, here’s the ugly truth: You’ll probably get paid less than your
white counterparts, if you’re even hired at all.
On both sides of the aisle, there is a racial pay gap in campaign
politics. Asian, Black and Latino staffers are paid less than their
white counterparts, according to an analysis by the New Organizing Institute.
For example, African-American staffers on Democratic campaigns
were paid 70 cents for each dollar their white counterparts made. For
Hispanic staffers in Democratic campaigns, the figure was 68 cents on
the dollar.
And a recent study by PowerPAC+, funded by a major Democratic donor, revealed that less than 2 percent of spending by Democratic campaign committees during the past two election cycles went to firms owned by minorities.
Political
operative Michael Gomez Daly worked on two congressional campaigns in
2012 with similar budgets. On one campaign, Daly, who describes himself
as “a very light-skinned Hispanic,” was brought in as a field director,
primarily for his skills as a Latino operative who could reach out to
the Hispanic community. On the second campaign, where they did not know
he was Hispanic, “I just came in as ‘Michael Daly,’ instead of ‘that
Latino operative,’” he said. “Right off the bat they offered me twice
the amount for the same job.”
Most of the operatives interviewed for this article, all of whom have
years of experience in campaign politics, said they had to make an
early, conscious decision to avoid being pigeonholed as a specialist in
minority outreach. For minority campaign staffers, they said, the path
to enduring success lies in saying “no” to jobs like that early on in
your career.
“It was pretty clear to me early on that you can get put in a box
pretty quickly. You get offers for jobs: African-American outreach,
Asian-American outreach. Oftentimes when you start doing that work, it’s
hard to get out of it,” said Sujata Tejwani, president of Sujata
Strategies, a Democratic firm.
Added Rodell Mollineau, a past
president of the progressive tracking organization American Bridge, “As a
person of color [at the start of your career], you’re always put in
situations where a primary part of your job is communicating with or
working with other people of color.”
The NOI statistics on the
campaign race pay gap compare all staffers of each race, and average out
the salaries. One of the explanations for lower minority wages could be
that they tend to be represented in lower-paying campaign roles.
“Most
minority staffers get hired in campaigns in field jobs, and field jobs
pay less,” explained Jamal Simmons, a Democratic political operative.
“The problem is: they don’t hire African Americans, Latinos in the parts
of the campaigns where they spend the most money. The most money in
campaigns is spent in communications, polling and data. In those parts
of the campaign, it’s very much mostly white.”
Conventional
campaign wisdom is that voters best respond to pitches made by those who
are similar to them. But this limits the roles that minority campaign
staffers are able to play.
“There’s a presumption that minorities
can’t manage ‘white’ issues. There’s a presumption that white voters
won’t like to see a black press secretary, or that white voters won’t
want to see an African-American or Latino political director,” Simmons
said. “There’s just a general prejudice factor,” he said, that’s based
in an antiquated understanding of race relations.
The issue of
race can sometimes create doubts even in the minds of the most
experienced operatives. “If the swing population [in an election] are
white, you do wonder if you’re going to get hired,” said Tejwani, an
Indian-American with decades of experience on campaigns.
The
hidden prejudices present in broader American society are part of the
problem. One operative compared campaigns to business startups that are
constantly shutting down and restarting. With deadlines looming, top
campaign staff may lean subconsciously on stereotypes about minorities.
Said
one operative with experience in Virginia and Georgia: “The structural
racism that happens in the United States, and how it is reinforced by a
lot of presumptions, don’t get dropped because you’re working on a
campaign.”
from here
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