Can The Republican Party Shed Its Image As The Grand Party Of Old White Men? Does It Even Want To?

Sunday, as part of an introduction to Blue America's latest endorsed candidate, George Gollin in central Illinois, we mentioned in passing that the mediocre Republican incumbent, careerist Rodney Davis, has a primary to worry about next month. His opponent, Erika Harold, an African-American former Miss America backed by Herman Cain and the Tea Party, would be a far more interesting and exciting candidate than the dull, whitebread Davis. But, as Todd Frankel pointed out in Politico over the weekend, the corrupt Republican Party Establishment is as wedded to Davis and the corrupt Democratic Party Establishment is wedded to Ann Callis, Steve Israel's as-dull-as-Davis recruit. He refers to snubs from party bosses and "[t]he adamant rejection when she asked to use Republican voter data." And then, of course, there was the racist welcome she got from a GOP district leader a week after she announced: "Jim Allen, a GOP county chairman in the 13th district, sent a message to an independent Republican website that began, 'Rodney Davis will win and the love child of the D.N.C. will be back in Shitcago by May of 2014 working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires.' He referred to the Republican candidate and Harvard graduate as a "street walker." Welcome to the Illinois Republican Party!

Harold would appear to be exactly the kind of candidate the GOP needs: Miss America 2003. A speaker at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Harvard Law School grad. A practicing attorney interested in the Constitution. She is just 33 years old, close enough to count as one of the coveted “millennial” voters herself. The product of a mixed-race marriage-- her father is white, her mother is African-American-- Harold has a background that recalls that of another Illinois politician, a guy who went on to hold a pretty lofty office himself.

“Just look at me,” Harold told the crowd of about 30 in the library basement, most of them older and white as she made her pitch for why they should unseat a freshman Republican congressman in this year's March primary in favor of her. “I am definitely not the stereotypical Republican.”

Harold’s appeal is built on “the optics, the experience, the resume.” That’s according to her dad-- who is also her campaign manager. “The party knows it has to broaden its base,” Bob Harold said, “and who better to do that?”

The Republican Party has talked plenty about the need to shed its image as the grand party of old white men-- especially after its 2012 presidential defeat, as party elders took notice of a demographic curve that appears to be running away from them. The Republican National Committee knows it, too, writing in a report last March that, “Young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes at what the party represents and many minorities wrongly think that Republicans do not like them or want them in the country.”

And here comes Harold. The GOP has never had a black woman in Congress, and in fact its best shot at making history this election cycle might be not Harold but Mia Love, a Haitian American and former mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, who narrowly lost her congressional bid in 2012 and is running again.

But the story of how Harold so far has gotten more national attention than local traction is instructive. She’s certainly gotten the media’s attention, perhaps not surprising given her Miss America credentials and compelling personal story—she recently appeared on Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show, and a poster board at her meeting with voters touted praise from the Daily Beast, Newsmax Magazine and the Weekly Standard (“A Glimmer of Hope for the Illinois GOP”).



 Harold doesn’t fit neatly into the taxonomy of today’s Republican factions: She is not a middle-of-the-road Republican. Nor is she a neocon, a Tea Partier or a strict libertarian cribbing Ayn Rand quotes. She calls herself a constitutional conservative. She is anti-abortion rights, pro-gun, believes that marriage is between a man and a woman. She does not support marijuana legalization. She wants to repeal Obamacare. She also is against the death penalty, because, she says, the sentences are too dependent on the varying quality of the accused’s attorneys.

Conservative politics were part of her tour as Miss America. The official platform that year was supposed to be reducing youth violence, but Harold pushed pageant organizers into letting her also promote abstinence before marriage. In 2004, she toured the country with then-party chief Ed Gillespie as part of a GOP outreach group. She served as an Illinois delegate to that year’s Republican National Convention, where she gave a speech about faith-based initiatives. Even then, people were touting her potential as a fresh new face for the party.

…“There are definitely some in the Republican establishment who don’t want me in the race,” Harold told the voters at the Edwardsville meeting.

Later, after Harold had posed for pictures and shaken hands and the room emptied out, she spoke with me about how she felt pushed aside by her own party. If the GOP wanted to win over voters of diverse backgrounds, she said, it needed also to offer opportunities for people like her to be part of the process. She said she had heard from other GOP candidates who have been discouraged by what has happened in her race. She said she didn’t want preferential treatment, “but a fair playing field, yes.”

No doubt, she remains very much a longshot in the March 18 primary. But she wants state GOP officials to know that she didn’t win Miss America on her first try, either. It took some doing. Twice in a row she lost the Miss Illinois pageant before finally claiming the title and going on to capture the jeweled tiara in Atlantic City, a crown she now keeps in a closet at home. She hopes that same resilience will pay off again.

“I don’t know why they’ve treated me like this,” Harold told me. But, she added: “I’m cognizant of the stakes here. I’m not going to give up.”

Davis refuses to debate her or recognize that he even has a primary opponent and GOP Establishment hostility to her is palpable. Ironically, Harold and her Democratic counterpoint, outsider candidate George Gollin, have more in common than the antipathy of their respective party establishments. Both are earnest candidates who are in politics for the reasons we want people to be in politics. And both have primary opponents apparently without an original idea in their heads: Davis unflinchingly toes the line handed down from on high; Democrat Ann Callis is the captive of the Illinois Democratic machine. When Sen. Dick Durbin began making noises about a benefit-cutting “compromise” on Social Security, Callis went right along, saying she will have to study “what parts need to be taken away.”

Blue America has endorsed George Gollin because he's an independent minded progressive who doesn't toe lines. Yesterday he told us that : "'Small-d' democracy only works when everybody not only speaks, but has an opportunity to be heard. I respect Ms. Harold, and the efforts by both parties’ bosses to clear the field serve themselves and the status quo. That’s not what the country needs right now." You can contribute to George's grassroots campaign here. His primary is next month.