Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is hosting meetings with female aides of color about strategies to ensure Democrats’ offices look more like the diverse base of their party. | AP Photo Senate Democrats pressed on poor diversity in hiring First-term Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is taking on a leading role in the initiative.

Senate Democrats are making headway toward fixing their staff diversity problem — and one of their own is looking to lead by example by publicly reporting the demographics of her payroll.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chamber’s first Latina, opened her books to Politico as the caucus works to rectify the meager number of minorities in senior staff positions. The Nevada lawmaker is also hosting meetings with aides who are women of color about strategies to ensure Democrats’ offices look more like the diverse base of their party, starting with Latinas, and is planning talks with African-American and Asian-American staffers.


Democrats, Cortez Masto said in an interview, should make diversity a watchword not just in the hiring of senior staff but “in our committee makeup” and “in thinking, when we are bringing folks in to intern, about how to keep that diversity going.”

Minorities hold six of the 16 senior staff positions in the senator’s office, and 20 of 38 staff positions overall, according to her office. Five Asian-American, three African-American and 12 Hispanic aides are part of an overall staff that’s also majority-female, including in the senior ranks.

Critics who had decried the Senate Democrats’ overwhelmingly white payroll as the year began are crediting incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for prioritizing diversity. Schumer in February offered new minority hiring rules that beef up the Senate Democratic Diversity Initiative created by his predecessor, former Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Discussions also are ongoing about minority hiring reports that could be similar to Cortez Masto’s proactive effort.

“The Diversity Initiative is already having an impact on the Senate,” Schumer said in a statement. “The more we can increase diversity in the Senate, the better this body can serve the American people.”

The moves can’t come too soon for the civil rights advocates and K Street consultants who have prodded Senate Democrats to do better — particularly given that two of their GOP counterparts, Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, employ African-American chiefs of staff. Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein of California both hired black legislative directors this year, however. And Harris’ office also reported to Politico that two-thirds of its staff positions are held by people of color, including a majority of its senior staff positions.

“I'm proud my staff reflects the Californians we serve, and I remain committed as ever to any effort to make the Senate workforce as a whole reflect the diversity of our country," Harris said in a statement.

Cortez Masto employs minorities in two of three of her most senior positions and is open to using her seat on the Senate Rules Committee to pitch more proposals aimed at holding offices accountable on minority hiring, her office said.

Cortez Masto’s move to release hiring statistics and meet staffers of color is “heartening, for sure,” said Don Bell, director of the Black Talent Initiative at the nonprofit Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “Everything starts at the top, especially in the Senate, so having members be thoughtful and engage people is really significant.”

Scott also lauded Democrats for adopting a modified version of the National Football League’s Rooney Rule, designed to give minority applicants a way into the interviewing process for senior openings. “I think if we just start diversifying the applicants, we’ll get better outcomes,” he said in an interview.

The Joint Center helped galvanize the Democratic diversity debate in 2015 with a staff demographics report that found racial and ethnic minorities occupied 7 percent of senior Senate staff posts, even as they represent grew to compose a record 31 percent of the U.S. electorate in 2016.

The group’s report limited its senior-staff census to chiefs of staff, legislative directors and communications directors to achieve a uniform snapshot. It noted, however, that different job descriptions among Senate offices, as well as the disparate makeup of leadership offices mean “there are other staff of color who have equivalent and sometimes more influence.”

Senate Democrats have yet to formally agree to publish caucus-wide staff diversity statistics. But diversity-hiring advocates are still working behind the scenes to settle on a framework for that disclosure. Part of that discussion revolves around the appropriate definition of senior staff. Cortez Masto’s office, for example, counts positions such as deputy chief of staff and counsel as senior aides.

“Every time I meet a young Latina, I know they’re thinking, ‘If she can do it, I can do it too,’” Cortez Masto said in an interview. “That’s what this is about.”

Diversity advocates don’t want to miss that full picture by focusing on only the upper echelon of the Senate.

“If you only look at the top three [aides], you don’t realize that right below those top positions” are staffers of color who should be recognized, said National Urban League Executive Vice President Don Cravins, who met last month with senior aides hashing out the hiring-disclosure issue.

“Reporting is key. It’s the only way we’ll be able to see successes,” added Cravins, the most recent African-American Senate Democratic chief of staff during his time in former Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office.

Meanwhile, the Senate Democratic Diversity Initiative is preparing to open a new hiring database to better connect offices with minority applicants who meet their needs, according to a leadership aide. The initiative recently hired a new director and has conducted more than 320 interviews so far.

“We still have a long way to go,” said Bell, who led the bipartisan Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus before leaving the Hill in March, “but compared to when I first delivered recommendations to offices in November, we’ve come a long way.”

Some proponents of the diversity effort, however, want to see the pace of change pick up. Schumer’s efforts are “quite good,” one former Senate Democratic staffer said in an interview, “but at the hiring level, I think it’s moving at a snail’s pace. There doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency.”

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The ex-staffer noted that in addition to the chiefs of staff in Scott’s and Moran’s offices, arguably the highest-ranking African-American staffer in Congress also works for a Republican: Jonathan Burks, chief of staff to Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

“Good for Paul Ryan,” the staffer said. “I totally disagree with him on a bunch of things, but — for all the crap Democrats give Republicans on this — they’re playing with a much smaller pool of people they can hire and are actually doing a better job of filling the very top positions with people of color.”

