Nearly five years ago, Joe Biden gathered his closest advisers to decide whether he would run for president in 2016. This was a “final judgment” meeting, as he would later describe it in his memoir, and around the room were Biden’s family and more than a half-dozen of his most trusted confidants.It was his innermost circle. Everyone was white.Biden won the 2020 Democratic primary on the strength of a multiracial political coalition anchored by black voters who overwhelmingly rallied behind him, and he has pledged to build a diverse administration as president. But while some black advisers have cracked Biden’s upper echelon and his team is racing to expand, the people setting strategy still skew heavily white, with limited Latino and even less Asian American representation.In recent days, as protests erupted over the death of George Floyd after being pinned down by Minneapolis police officers, Biden has moved to forge even stronger ties to black Americans, presenting himself as a healing force in the country’s searing debate over race. He has delivered two addresses acknowledging the pain and suffering of African Americans, drawing a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s belligerent response.But the fear is that a lack of diverse viewpoints in Biden’s brain trust could come with a long-term cost: a misinterpretation that boiling anger at Trump equates to excitement for Biden; insufficient outreach to minority groups; and — perhaps most worrisome of all — the possibility that Biden’s team would take for granted that his strength with black voters in the primaries would repeat itself in November, a complaint lodged against Hillary Clinton four years ago.”It matters who is doing the shaping of the campaign,” said LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund. She was one of a dozen black female leaders invited to a recent private call with Biden, during which she said representation came up.But for Biden, demonstrating differences with the president is not enough to drive minority voters to the polls, or a substitute for delivering an inspiring message to people of color, some activists argue. Black voters are a critical constituency for Biden and could make the difference in a razor-thin election.So far, the strongest public pressure on Biden has been to select a woman of color as his running mate. But interviews with more than three dozen donors, activists and Democratic officials inside and out of the campaign found that many viewed the racial composition of the Biden brain trust as just as significant in terms of how he can unite the broad spectrum of the Democratic Party in 2020 and, if elected, govern in 2021.Privately, the Biden campaign leadership has emphasized to Democratic leaders that it is broadening its upper ranks, including two new senior advisers who are people of color and the formation of a new coalitions department.More hires are coming: The campaign is sifting through a list of 100 Latinos recommended for jobs, and has been pinging black leaders for suggestions, according to people familiar with the plans. Biden officials have emphasized that the campaign was severely limited by its budget in the primary.”The team is not built out yet. We won the primary with a skeleton crew,” said Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana, Biden’s first national co-chairman.Some nonwhite advisers have certainly advanced to the inner sanctum of the Biden campaign. Richmond has a standing invitation to strategy sessions, and Symone Sanders is an influential senior adviser with a wide-ranging portfolio, from progressive outreach to overall messaging; both are black. Outside the campaign, Biden deeply values the counsel of Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest-ranking African American in Congress, and, of course, former President Barack Obama.”People of color have power here,” Sanders said. “When it comes to the purse strings, when it comes to access, when it comes to strategy, when it comes to messaging.”As the Biden campaign adds new senior-level hires, the question is how much the new voices will be incorporated at the highest levels.The previous highest-ranking Latina on the Biden campaign, Vanessa Cardenas, left as national coalitions director last fall. “They didn’t expand the circle of voices that are truly making decisions,” Cardenas said in her first public comments since her departure.Those who have worked with Biden over the years describe him as solicitous of an array of different perspectives. “Otherwise,” said Valerie Jarrett, a top White House adviser to Obama, “he wouldn’t have been the vice president for Barack Obama for two terms.”At the same time, Biden has often retreated to a familiar set of faces for counsel at critical junctures. His operation is known for its fierce mutual loyalty, and many of his advisers of all backgrounds have remained close for years.Don Graves, who was Biden’s counselor as vice president and one of his highest-ranking black aides, said valuing diversity was “fundamental to who Joe Biden is.”Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, who took over as campaign manager in March, is said to be keenly focused on diversity, and the campaign recently hired two veteran strategists and Obama veterans, Julie Chavez Rodriguez and Karine Jean-Pierre, as senior advisers.Black and Latino donors and strategists have said diversity concerns are not just about having people in the room, but making sure that those who are there are not expected to speak exclusively about race, or on behalf of black or Latino voters everywhere.In an introductory call with her staff, O’Malley Dillon was frustrated with the public perception that the new hires were chiefly representatives of minority groups and explicitly pushed back on the idea that Rodriguez, who is Latino, and Jean-Pierre, who is black, were hired to focus on black and brown voters, according to two people on the call.While she was announced as a senior adviser and the most senior Latina on the Biden team, Rodriguez will not actually be working full time for Biden; she is a consultant and keeping one other client.One of the other three people of color initially announced as a senior adviser in 2019, Brandon English, has been largely disempowered.Concern is more acute among some Latino leaders. Polls showed that Biden began the 2020 primary as the leading choice of Latinos, who will make up a pivotal bloc of voters in November, but he ended up losing Hispanic voters badly in early states to Sen. Bernie Sanders, who invested heavily in outreach.”He’s surrounding himself by an almost all-white inner circle of high-level staff that don’t reflect the diversity of America,” said Domingo Garcia, the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, who spoke recently with Biden. “Our voices are just kind of muffled in the whole campaign structure.”Cristobal Alex, for instance, is regarded as the campaign’s top Latino strategist, a senior adviser with a portfolio beyond Latino outreach. But he is not seen as a member of the inner circle.”I believe Cristobal is trusted,” said Rep. Tony Cardenas of California, the chairman of the political arm of the Hispanic Caucus. “But I have yet to see he is empowered” to the same extent that Sanders granted authority to his top Latino adviser, Cardenas said.Cardenas, who has helped arrange recent weekly calls between Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, and Hispanic lawmakers, said the Biden campaign was now “saying they understand what it’s going to take” to win those voters in November.The Biden team has also had to field some disenchantment from Asian American leaders. Some were upset when the campaign, in one of its first moves after Biden became the presumptive nominee, replaced Seema Nanda, the Democratic National Committee’s top Asian American official, as chief executive officer.Varun Nikore, president of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander Victory Fund, which recently hosted an event with Biden, said he “couldn’t point to one” Asian American with significant political sway inside the Biden hierarchy.While the campaign’s chief operating officer and the newly announced chief financial officer are Asian American, lack of representation has been a concern.Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles, who became the highest-ranking Latino in the Biden campaign as national co-chairman in January, rejected the notion that Biden does not seek diverse counsel. Citing the campaign’s lack of cash, Garcetti said he was surprised at the slimness of the operation when he joined.”It’s not like, ‘Oh there’s no Latinos here,'” he said. “I looked at the campaign and said, ‘Oh there’s nobody here.’ Because we didn’t have the resources. It wasn’t like the closet was filled with a bunch of nondiverse faces. It wasn’t filled yet.”This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
