The 2024 Republican presidential field has already made history months before the first nominating contest: A record six of the roughly dozen major candidates seeking to become their party’s standard-bearer are people of color.
That includes three Black men: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd and conservative radio host Larry Elder; two candidates of Asian Indian descent: former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; and one Latino contender, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez.
“The message that our candidates are sending to the rest of America is: ‘We are you,’” said Camilla Moore, a lifelong Republican from the Atlanta area who chairs the Georgia Black Republican Council, an arm of the state GOP. She has not decided whom she will back in the primary.
And although the party’s candidates of color currently trail front-runner former President Donald Trump in the polls, Moore said, “Any of these candidates have an opportunity to break through.”
The growing minority representation in the top echelons of Republican politics could help the party make further inroads with African American and Latino voters – groups long central to the Democratic Party coalition, strategists from both parties say. And questions about racism and the future of policies aimed at dismantling structural barriers for minorities in American society have moved to the forefront of the 2024 contest – particularly after the nation’s high court on Thursday gutted affirmative action in college admissions.
Republican gains among voters of color, though incremental, have been building. In the 2016 election won by Trump, four of the 17 major GOP presidential hopefuls were candidates of color.
In 2020, when Republicans picked up more than a dozen House seats, every one of the newly elected GOP members was a…
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