Republicans are taking diversity seriously ?

The recent news in Washington Times suggested that Republican presidential candidates reversing their course and participating in Spanish language debate next month (UNIVISION)aimed at Hispanic voters. Spanish people look at Republicans as a threat as most of them have the agenda of securing the boarder and stopping the illegal immigration. Its not just Hispanic; Blacks and GLBT also in general don't seem to favor republicans this time.

This month's Diversity Inc magazine carry some interesting statistics on Presidential candidate participation on the events/conferences by the organizations that advocate for people of color and GLBT . None of the top Republican candidates attended NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) conference but all top democratic candidates did. Republicans also missed NCLR conference and LOGO debate.

The June 07 issue of the Diversityinc magazine had another report that listed the diversity of the campaign supporting staff of Presidential candidates. Giuliani has 100% white staff, Romney and McCain have only 10% colored staff. However, among democrats , Clinton has 63% colored staff and Obama has 43%. Typically the candidates will have 50+ main staff promoting the campaign and they could be compared with the management in a corporation. A big company with no diversity at management level is a concern and the same is true for voters.

So the republicans accepting to participate in Univision debate is a welcome change especially when their competition(Democrats) are far ahead with matters related to Diversity. Surely they don't want to miss this opportunity but we will have to wait and see how committed they are going to be throughout the campaign.

Obama and J-J Dinner

Barack Obama’s performance yesterday (11th Nov 2007) at J-J Dinner campaign here in Des Moines was on of the excellent he had so far. Probably he could keep this momentum to win the caucus and eventually to win the primary. Des Moines Register’s political analyst Yespen gave the candidate a thumps-up among all democrats spoke at J-J Dinner. Washington Post thought Obama was the most focused and powerful.

It seems the J-J dinner was a turning point for John Kerry and so this successful one could be a game changer for Obama. I loved his speech and the energy with which he delivered it. To quote Yespen “Should he win the Iowa caucuses, Saturday's dinner will be remembered as one of the turning points in his campaign, a point where he laid down the marker and began closing on Clinton, the national frontrunner”.