Hill Reporter Slams 'White Male' House GOP Leadership Team

November 21st, 2014 10:44 PM

On Wednesday's Washington Journal program on C-SPAN, congressional reporter Christina Marcos of The Hill newspaper slammed the white-maleness of the House Republican leadership and underlined it reflects "these issues of diversity that the Republican Party's been having."

In a brief phone interview, C-SPAN host Greta Wodele Brawner asked with the typical neutrality, "What’s the headline?"

Marcos replied: "What’s remarkable about this is, once again, there’s only one female House committee chairwoman, in this Congress and in the next one. Every single new House committee chairman that was announced yesterday by the House Steering Committee is a white male. And also, every single one of the committee chairs for next year will also be white. And that reflects, you know, these issues with diversity that the Republican Party’s been having."

This answer completely skipped over Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of eastern Washington, who is the chairman of the House Republican Conference, third in the House leadership. She provided last year's Republican response to the State of the Union address.

In her paper, Marcos also strove to highly the lack of diversity: "House GOP picks all-male slate of new committee chairs." The female House committee leader is Rep. Candice Miller of Michigan, who heads the House Administration Committee. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but only for two years, before this latest Congress.