News (USA)

New PAC asks straight white men not to run for office

New PAC asks straight white men not to run for office

The new “Can You Not PAC” started as a joke about getting more LGBT people, women, and people of color in elected office, but now Kyle Huelsman and Jack Teter are getting serious.

The new political action committee’s goal isn’t to necessarily promote the minority candidates as it is to ask the “epidemic of overly confident, under qualified white dudes crowding out America’s elections” to step back and let qualified minority candidates take the reigns according to The Daily Dot. White men need to “reject any notion that they are uniquely qualified or positioned to seek political office in districts that don’t need them.”

Huelsman and Teter are both white men and the irony isn’t lost on the two of them. As democrats, they feel their role is to support minority candidates to help create a government more representative of the general public.

“We work in politics for one real reason — to bring everyone’s voice to the table. If I’m a Democratic operative and I want the most progressive policy possible and data tells me that progressive policies do better when there are more women and people of color and LGBT folks in office, why would I run against those folks except to feed my own ego?” Teter said.

“We’re not telling white men to stop working in politics. We’re asking them to stop assuming that they’re the best voice to represent their communities… It is the absolute obligation of people in positions of privilege to dismantle oppressive power systems. It is the job of white people to fight racism. It is the job of straight allies to stop passing bathroom laws like HB2. That’s what allyship looks like.”

“It is likely that we will focus on districts where white dudes are challenging some of the best women of color in majority black or brown districts,” Huelsman said.

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