Thanks to Abercrombie, Republican Senators More Racially Diverse than Democrats

NJ: At a time when more than one-third of Americans are nonwhite, just five senators are racial minorities. Digging deeper, there are now more Republican minorities in the Senate (South Carolina’s Tim Scott, Florida’s Marco Rubio, and Texas’s Ted Cruz) than Democrats (New Jersey’s Robert Menendez and Hawaii’s Mazie Hirono).…

Democrats missed a chance to see their caucus’s diversity increase after Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii died last month. Inouye, the Japanese-American who had represented Hawaii in Washington ever since it became a state, had requested that Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who is also Asian-American, be appointed. But Gov. Neil Abercrombie chose his political ally Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz, who is white, to fill the seat and represent Hawaii, which is 25 percent white. State politics ruled the day…..

…at a time when America’s racial diversity is increasing, it’s a wonder how one of its highest legislative chambers is only getting whiter, with the majority of its racial diversity represented by Republicans.

read … Racial Diversity? Not in the Senate

Boylan: Election 2012 may have changed Republican thinking forever, even as far south as South Carolina.