Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton Beef Up Staff Diversity

By Kenrya Rankin Oct 20, 2015

It looks like the staffs of the two Democratic presidential candidate frontrunners are expanding to include more people of color. Hillary Clinton’s campaign released stats that show that of its 511 staffers, 32.2 percent of them are people of color—the same as it was in July when diversity hiring initiative Inclusv analyzed Clinton’s staff data. That share goes up to 37.5 percent when senior staff is isolated. 

The Sanders camp told BuzzFeed News that 33 percent of its 193 staffers are people of color, which represents a significant bump up from the 10 percent Inclusv counted during the summer. Meanwhile just 17.1 percent of Martin O’Malley’s 41-member staff is made up of people of color (up from nine percent).

Alida Garcia, executive director of Inclusv, is heartened by the progress, but wants to see more, per a statement provided to Colorlines:

We are thrilled to see the largest Democratic employer in this campaign cycle lead by self-publishing their own diversity data. … We ask every campaign from president, to Senate, to Congressional to the party committees to do the same and self report quarterly numbers. Only then will each organization be able to genuinely prioritize improvement. Cycle-after-cycle this has been an unnecessary challenge in progressive politics—people of color are fed up and expect this type of transparency from the campaigns that are asking for their votes.