I'm really disappointed that I can't vote this year. (Expat in Canada! Woo!)

I want to punt Giuliani. Seriously. He'll be Bush III.

Fascinating stuff. I love a good chart breakdown.

Where is Kucinich? I'm tired of him being ignored as he's my favorite candidate.

nerdalert, you can still vote! It's very easy to register as an overseas absentee voter. I'm an American expat living in England, and I still vote in my home state via postal ballot.

100% white? Wow. You really have to try to do a thing like that nowadays. Do you think he's maybe making a statement there about his vision for America?

Looks like Hillary has the most even distribution.

Aside from the lack of Native American staff members. Geez. Richardson is the only one?! They can't make up THAT small a percentage of the general population...

Hillary's staff is less than half white. Wow. Not to put to much weight on any campaign season-related statistics but with a breakdown like that I think we could expect some real diversity in a Clinton White House. Go her.

Giuliani on the other hand ... knowing that his staff is 100 percent white makes it seem even scarier that some of his top advisers are neconservatives that would make Bush blush.

I have nightmares about Rudy Giuliani. However I think that might have a lot to do with that Radar magazine cover.

Does the ethnicity of the staff really matter? If diversity is the goal shouldn't we really strive for/demand real diversity?When I look at our current president and his staff, ethnically there is quite a mix and quite a few women but they all read from the exact same sheet of music. I'd rather have a staff of 10 white females who had at least some marked variance in beliefs and approach than 5 women, 5 men, all of different ethnicities that were 100% true believers in a singular, limited, ideaology.

Definitely a good point. Diversity goes far beyond skin color (as the administrators of my mostly-white college will gladly point out). Bring on the diversity-of-ideas bar charts!

I was surprised at the large amount of asians working for Clinton. Then I was reminded of some of her campaign's recent fund raising scandals and I laughed.

Aside from the lack of Native American staff members. Geez. Richardson is the only one?! They can't make up THAT small a percentage of the general population...

According to the 2000 Census (.pdf), one percent of the US population is American Indian, Pacific Islander or Native Alaskan. The above chart has 10% of Clinton's campaign staff listed as "native american." If anything, she's overrepresenting them. The total goes up to 10% in New Mexico, and I would assume that they trend pretty heavily Democratic, so that explains a bit about Richardson's staff (along with NM being 1% asian explaining the dearth of asians on his staff).

Big (homestate) New Mexico love to Bill Richardson for having some Native Americans on staff! Whooo! Also, I have to be frank...it kinda freaks me out to see Guiliani's entirely blue bar. As sgzax pointed out, these days, that's gotta be deliberate. Wow, classy.

I am in no way a fan of Guiliani but I really dont understand the point of this graphic, the point of ethnic breakdowns of campaign staff. It just reminds me too much of the tactics Bush used to forestall criticism of his staff and later his cabinet. If I'm to believe this graphic has any real meaning I could take away from it that Rudy is completely in the wrong and Biden has a staff completely out of whack for his home state but I could also point to Hillary having "too many" Asians and Blacks compared to their representation at large. Where does this discussion get us?

I was surprised at the large amount of asians working for Clinton. Then I was reminded of some of her campaign's recent fund raising scandals and I laughed.

Yes because all Asians are corrupt.

I would agree that the breakdown wasn't significant if Giuliani's staff wasn't 100% white. Maybe the rest of the breakdown doesn't make a significant difference, and we certainly should focus on the content of a person's ideas first and foremost, but an all-white staff really begs the question of whether Giuliani respects people of other ethnic groups at all.

I can see criticizing Giuliani based on his ideas, but criticizing him based on the skin color of his campaign staff seems inappropriate at best.

It's no less inappropriate than criticizing someone for having no women on their staff. Or for criticizing congress for being mostly white, old men.

A candidate's staff are people they interact with very closely, high-level staffers people they are often times friends with on some level. Some staff people have more influence on how the campaign is run than the candidate themselves do.

I think it's ridiculous to say that who the staffers are doesn't matter. It's just like a college, or a business, or anything else. No affirmative action isn't a perfect process, but it definitely increases the diversity of not only superficial characteristics, but also real-life interests and beliefs of a group of people. And people definitely tend to have at least some special compassion for members of their own group. Look at the way that Clinton has the most females, or Obama has the most blacks. I would assume that these staffers, would, in turn, tend to want to help out their constituents in the rest of America as well.

Also, FYI: just looking at the fact that Bush has diversity on his staff, and also the fact that Bush has a bad administration, and then concluding that means ethnic diversity isn't important, is bad logic.

"It's no less inappropriate than criticizing someone for having no women on their staff. Or for criticizing congress for being mostly white, old men."

Agreed. It is no less inappropriate.

"I think it's ridiculous to say that who the staffers are doesn't matter."

Agreed again. Who the staffers are is very important. Their skin color, however, is not.

Their skin color is a component of their life experience, and a component of their ongoing experience of life, and therefore a component of who they are. It is not everything they are, obviously. Maybe not even most of who they are. But it is undeniably one component.

This is a pretty common argument, and we are probably not going to find common ground, so I'll leave it at that as I see the potential for an ugly thread at this point.

(And I think most people who have lived as a minority in our culture would say that it is a rather significant component of who they are, as well)

I think a really important implication of this post, and question to ask, is:

Okay, there are plenty of qualified female and minority political wonks out their. So if someone's campaign is looking particularly white-washed, that's indicative of a selection process, as much, or moreso, than if there is plenty of diversity. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to be irked by that implication.

(One obvious reason, of course, could simply be tied up in the fact that most minorities who are interested in politics are liberals)

Nina-
I understand what your saying and it has a lot of merit but what I'm saying is that Bush does not have diversity on his staff. Yes people of different ethnic backgrounds may very well offer key insights and bring a lot to the table but in the political realm a diversity of ideas and background are more important to me. I rarely get caught up in the race side of things, I'm much more interested in the class side. A diversity of political outlook, thinking process and socioeconomic status would be truly amazing, not simply a group comprised of several different skin tones (not that those two things are mutually exclusive.) For example, I just separated from the Air Force after 10 years. We had quite a lot of ethnic diversity and my career field within the service was 50% female (linguistics). So we had quite a variey of people but shockingly quite a paucity of conflicting political views and were made up almost entirely of lower-middle/middle class people. I guess you could look at that as diversity in a way but in a more important way, how it is applied to politics, it wasnt. Sure having black, white, yellow or green staffers may make it so youre more sympathetic to their respective concerns and causes but, as I'm hopelessly optimistic, do we still need this type of reassurance? I'm sure we will see more of these kinds of breakdowns, by race and gender, and it will spark a lot of debate on both sides but to me this is just one of many distractions littered among the campaign trail. There is a year left in the process and a candidates staff if often in flux, giving more "credit" to one candidate for staffing with people of various ethnicities makes little sense to me. Saying a person who has chosen to make 10 cigar-chomping white males his entire staff must be hopelessly backwards, racist and biased most likely has little to do with reality and at its root is also a form of racism. Unless we wish to make every candidate have a staff of 100 and break it down by ethnicity and gender there is very little to this argument in my opinion. Ascribing personality characteristis to people based on choices we cant fully understand is a dangerous way to go.

Hey Americans, here's a newsflash: Latino isn't really an ethnicity!

Oh, Latino isn't an ethnicity? What is it then, please?

"Yes because all Asians are corrupt."

Um, no. Does the name Norman Hsu ring a bell?

My thought upon seeing this chart (besides the obvious about Guiliani, Romney, and McCain)is, "Wait, Richardson and Biden still have campaign staffs? Seriously?"