(Time) Nine months after Barack Obama’s edge with young people, minority groups and women carried him to re-election, the Republican National Committee is beginning a new campaign to showcase the diversity in the GOP ranks.
Launched last week, the RNC’s Rising Stars initiative highlights the next generation of the Republican Party, a group of activists, authors, elected officials and candidates that combats the GOP’s homogenous image. “The Republican Party has gotten a stereotype as being populated mostly with old white men,” New Hampshire state representative Marilinda Garcia, one of the RNC’s Rising Stars, tells TIME. “The point is to highlight people such as myself who are not old white men, along with other young people, and let us be the messengers.”
The initiative will tout about four new up-and-coming Republicans every three months. In addition to Garcia, the first batch of Rising Stars includes T.W. Shannon, Oklahoma’s first African-American speaker of the house and a protégé of former Representative J.C. Watts; conservative writer Scott Erickson; and Karin Agness, the founder of a group for conservative college women.
The Party of Old White Guys Changes Its Look