In an Increasingly Diverse House, Aides Remain Remarkably White

WASHINGTON — House aides write federal policy and multitrillion-dollar budgets, oversee the administration of government and shape the public’s view of Congress, but the top staff members of the House of Representatives are far less racially diverse than the country itself — or even the lawmakers who employ them.

Just 13.7 percent of top staff members in the House are people of color, according to researchers at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a nonpartisan Washington think tank that promotes racial diversity in government. That compares with 38 percent of the country as a whole, and 23 percent of the House. Of the 40 top Democratic and Republican aides who lead the staffs of House committees, the panels at the center of nearly all congressional legislation and oversight, only six are nonwhite.

“This is not a party issue. It is not an individual member issue. This is a structural issue,” Spencer Overton, the president of the Joint Center, said in an interview. “The House of Representatives cannot effectively create public policy that benefits all Americans if the people making policy decisions do not look like all of America.”

Overton and his co-authors intentionally released their report just two months before congressional elections that are all but certain to shuffle the makeup of the House — and potentially usher in a record number of new female and nonwhite officials. They hope the report will prod lawmakers as they assemble teams to help shape the agenda of the new Congress.

“This disconcerting report clearly shows that members of Congress must do more to increase diversity and inclusion in their offices,” said a joint statement from the Congressional Asian Pacific American Staff Association, the Congressional Black Associates, the Congressional Hispanic Staff Association and the Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus. The current Congress “set a historical record for racial and ethnic diversity among members in both chambers of Congress. It is imperative that the composition of congressional staff reflects the demographics of our country.”

The implications of the House’s employment mix are farther reaching. The House cultivates talent for the White House and executive branch, the Senate, governorships, lobbying firms and policy shops across the country, so the makeup of House staff has an effect far beyond one side of the Capitol.

By and large, that House farm team — defined in the study as chiefs of staff, legislative or policy directors, communications directors, and committee staff directors — continues to be constituted mostly of white Americans, even as the House becomes more diverse. (The study did not specifically study the gender or sexual identity of top staff.)

Not a single Latino, Asian-American or Pacific Islander, or Native American holds a top committee job or serves as a top aide in one of the four top Democratic or Republican leadership offices. Just three African-Americans serve as top aides to leadership offices in either party.

The picture is no more diverse in the personal offices of lawmakers, where 313 House members — almost 75 percent of the body — have no racial minorities among their top staff. And 114 of those lawmakers represent districts that are more than one-third people of color, including nearly 50 that are majority nonwhite, the researchers found.

Democratic offices employ more minorities overall in senior staff positions, in large part because members of the Congressional Black Caucus tend to hire nonwhite staff members at a much higher rate than any other group. There are only two black Republicans in the House, Reps. Mia Love of Utah and Will Hurd of Texas. There are 43 House Democrats who have a floor vote and are black, as well as two nonvoting black Democrats.

Nearly a quarter of top Democratic staff members are people of color, compared with less than 5 percent of Republican staff.

But when the offices of nonwhite lawmakers are removed from consideration, the diversity of the staffs working for white Republicans and white Democrats is similar. Researchers counted 329 white lawmakers and found that only 16 — six Democratic and 10 Republican — had offices led by a nonwhite chief of staff.

“It seems that the American public is more likely to elect a person of color to the House than House members are to hire a top staffer of color,” Overton said.

There are notable exceptions. Jonathan Burks, the chief of staff to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is black. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the minority leader, employs a black communications director, and Rep. James E. Clyburn, D-S.C., the assistant minority leader, who is black, employs a top staffer who is black. The Republican staff director for one of the most powerful committees in Congress, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee under Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., is a black woman.

Senior officials from both parties argue that the study’s definition of “top staff” was arbitrary, excluding other nonwhite senior-level aides from the statistics despite their influential roles in shaping and communicating policy in Washington and in district offices around the country. Pelosi’s office, for example, provided detailed statistics showing that 35 percent of all staff members in her leadership office and 56 percent in her personal office were nonwhite.

“Leader Pelosi has always believed in the importance of leading by example,” said Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi.

A spokeswoman for Ryan declined to comment.

Of the top staff members of color counted by the study, 79 are black, 45 are Latino, 32 are Asian-American or Pacific Islander, one is Native American and four are bi- or multiracial. Each race is underrepresented relative to the country’s total population by a factor of about two or more, and Latinos, Native Americans and bi- and multiracial staff by at least a factor of four.

Because the House does not keep demographic data on its employees, the study’s authors relied on publicly available data on employment as of June 1, and an office-by-office survey. The New York Times did not independently verify most counts. A similar study of the Senate, which counts just 100 members, in 2015 found that the top staff members in the body were even whiter as a group: Only 7.1 percent of top staff members were people of color. House Democrats began a formal initiative in June 2017 to diversify their workforce, hiring a full-time director to lead the effort. They expect to begin conducting their own survey of all House Democratic staff members before November’s election, and Hammill said a handful of other Democratic lawmakers have begun drafting a letter to ask the Rules Committee to expand the initiative to the entire House should Democrats win the majority.

The report recommends that many of those changes, and others, like paying for House internships and fellowships, be applied by both parties. Individual Republican lawmakers and committees have instituted internship programs and other initiatives aimed at increasing staff diversity, but there is no parallel to Democrats’ caucuswide efforts.