Is the GOP Ready for Erika Harold? - Todd Frankel - POLITICO Magazine
There is no semblance of any re branding at the GOP
She’s a young, black, Harvard-educated Miss America. So why don’t the Republicans want her to run?
“One thing after another,” lamented Doug Ibendahl, a Chicago attorney and former state GOP general counsel who considers Harold a “top notch” candidate. “There are people in the Republican Party who are actively working against her who shouldn’t be.”
It does seem odd. 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?”
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