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Aaron Blake
Senior political reporter, writing for The Fix
The Democrat Antonio Delgado is Rhodes Scholar and attorney with a law degree from Harvard. He participated in one of the most contested races in the country.
But Republicans want to embody a different image in the minds of voters in the 19th Congressional District of New York. Their latest ad, released Wednesday, features grainy clips of Delgado, who is African-American and made a rap album in 2007. His censored explicit lyrics dominate the ad, as well as the album cover, which shows a blatant delgado in a hoodie.
Vigorous tensions around race, gender and identity shape the struggles of northern New York in the deep South, reflecting Trump's marked schism and the growing demographic divide between the two parties.
With just a day off Thursday, Democrats have set or essentially set records for the number of female, black and LGBT nominees, according to a Washington Post analysis. Republican diversity statistics either remained static or declined in each category, leading to a list of very white male candidates.
Republicans aggressively attempt to qualify Democratic candidates as frightening and threatening people with unknown values. A super PAC linked to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Aired an advertisement in Ohio that tenuously linked a candidate of Tibetan and Indian descent to Libyan interests and asked him to "sell Americans. " The GOP holder posted an announcement showing his female Democratic opponent claiming to be a feminist.
Democrats are increasingly calling the GOP, saying that it is racist and sexist attacks that remind them of the divisive tactics used by Donald Trump as a candidate and re-elected president. Even some Republicans are troubled by the tone.
"The difference between the past and the present is that you have a political actor like the president who does it right, who gives his permission," said Michael Steele, who was the first black president of the Republican National Committee. "If you do not speak and you do not say it, it will germinate, it will become an infection and it will create the kind of disease in our policy, which I think to a certain extent, we are already seeing."
The Republicans behind the attacks make no excuses. They claim that they inform voters of their rivals.
"The Democratic replica is crying racism while all I'm saying is that it should explain its words," Republican Rep. John Faso said, the outgoing Republican Delgado is trying to overturn in a northern neighborhood of the state of New York. In an interview, Faso, who is white, has pulled some explicit words from Delgado. "I think they would generally bother anyone who hears them," said Faso.
The announcement of the Republican National Congress Committee contains excerpts from the Delgado album, under the name of AD the Voice. In his songs, Delgado addresses social and political issues and uses obscenities and a racial epithet.
"If the Democrats are unhappy about using Antonio Delgado's rap lyrics in commercials, then they should not have named it," said NRC spokesperson Jesse Hunt.
In a hurry to find out whether the publicity and others launched by Republican candidates and groups are racist or sexist, a Ryan spokesperson did not respond directly. Instead, Jeremy Adler said the campaign should focus on the economy and the policies of the House GOP.
Delgado called the criticism of his album "a blatant attempt to distract from real problems".
Race has also recently gone through the contest of Florida governors. Democrat Andrew Gillum, the first state governor, said in an interview that he hoped to face racist attacks – but not on the first day.
The day after the elementary school, Ron DeSantis, who is white, nominated at the GOP, used a phrase that many African Americans have deemed offensive, suggesting on Fox News that the election of Gillum and his liberal policies good track under conservative control .
Gillum spoke to his wife that night to prepare her for the way the contest could be horrible. "Wait, because God knows how deep it can go," he recalls.
DeSantis campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson said it was "absurd" to call the remark something other than a political comment. One of his donors, Dan Eberhart, said DeSantis "certainly" stumbled "with" his critical comment "and" will have to avoid this kind of blunder in the future ".
Gillum is one of two black Democratic candidates for governorship in the South, joining Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who is would also run against a Trump-backed candidate, Secretary of State Brian Kemp.
Democrats have at least 62 black candidates in the House, according to the PAC Collective and a review of candidates by mail. The number is the same as in recent years, as researcher David Bositis has shown. Republicans have identified 10 black nominees at the GOP House, down from the last few years and two dozen in the 90s.
According to an analysis of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, Democrats have a record 20 LGBT candidates in the House and Senate; Republicans do not have any after presenting a handful in recent years.
The most marked change in the diversity of candidates has been among women democrats. Democrats have appointed 182 women to the House this year, according to the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics, already achieving 40% of all districts and setting a record that breaks more than half of the number of nominees in 2016.
Republicans have 52 women, which is consistent with recent elections. But the GOP share of all candidates – 22% – is the lowest for at least 40 years. Democrats also set a record of 15 women's appointments in the Senate and 12 in governor races. Republicans have less than half in each case.
"I think this administration and the president and his policies of division are a great motivation," said Representative Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.), Vice President of Recruitment for the Democrat House campaign arm. "I think a lot of the candidates we met started with the Women's Walk and ended up going to their town hall to register as a candidate."
In Kentucky, Democratic candidate Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot, would be the first woman to represent the 6th Lexington District Convention if she defeated Rep. Repuban Garland "Andy" Barr. She is fighting a flood of negative ads, including Barr's showing her saying, "Hell yeah, I'm a feminist."
Another advertisement from the Congressional Leadership Fund shows his photo alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) And Hillary Clinton, the representative with other powerful women.
"It's inherent sexism," McGrath said. "But I'm not focused on that."
"No, I'm the father of two girls," Barr said when asked about his response to McGrath's claim, "Of course, I believe in equal opportunities regardless of sex." enumerated women occupying positions of responsibility in his congressional office.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a major super PAC for which Ryan raised funds, but an independent craft strategy, launched some of the most controversial commercials. In the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Congressional District 1, the group released an announcement aligning Democratic candidate Aftab Pureval with Libyan interests through the law firm that employed him.
Sinister plays and dark images of the wreckage of an airplane and former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi are flashing on the screen. "One can not trust Aftab Pureval," says the narrator. The ad received four Pinocchios from The Post's Fact Checker.
"I leave it to others to give reasons," Pureval said of the strategy behind the ad. Later, Pureval, who is of Tibetan and Indian descent, issued a statement from a campaign assistant calling his opponent, Republican Republican Steve Chabot, to condemn what he sees as attacks. racists on the spot. "Our campaign has nothing to do with the announcement, but we do not see anything in advertising either," said Cody Rizzuto, spokesperson for the Chabot campaign.
In a statement, Courtney Alexander, director of communications for the CLF, defended the advertisements: "It is flattering to see how much the Democratic candidates are stressed by our ads as we educate voters on their extreme Liberal records.
While the GOP is increasingly focused on voting for conservative voters, many of whom are loyal to Trump, the party that has made diversity a goal, most recently after the 2012 elections, has fallen behind.
In addition to the GOP in women's nominations falling to its lowest level in 40 years, its share of black nominees is the lowest of at least 20 years, less than 1 in 6 (14.5% ); and its share of LGBT candidates is also lower than that of the last election cycles (15%).
In 2010, the GOP had 34% of female candidates and 25% of all black candidates. Republicans had about twice as many black candidates in 1994 and 2000 as they do today.
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