Democratic Caucus Chair Imposes Strict Identity Requirements for Leaders, Says Choosing on Merit Is ‘Absurd’

Caesar Valentine sent an email to the members of the South Carolina Democratic LGBTQ caucus just before 2 p.m. on the first Saturday in August. There would be a Zoom meeting on Monday. Members would have to RSVP to join, wrote Valentine, the black 31-year-old caucus chairman.

They would be voting on the caucus bylaws. There would be a special guest, a congressional candidate. And they would be voting on a caucus secretary, treasurer, and four vice chairs.

But not just anyone could fill the vice-chair positions, Valentine wrote.

“1^st– has to be trans or non-binary, 2^nd– opposing race to chair, 3^rd– opposing gender to chair, 4^th– younger than 35,” Valentine wrote. The nominations for the positions were closed.

The identity and trait-based restrictions don’t seem to have raised many concerns — the votes were held and the positions were filled, Valentine said.

But at least one South Carolina Democrat says the restrictions stink; they have “nothing to do with merit,” they limit opportunities, and they take the party’s obsession with identity politics to a “whole new level.”

It is not clear that under Valentine’s rules an otherwise qualified non-trans black man over 35 would have qualified for any of the vice-chair positions. About a quarter of South Carolina’s population is black, one of the highest in the country, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Their efforts at ‘inclusivity’ have veered into Orwellian territory in that they are trying to engineer a council without taking individuality or true democracy into account,” the Democrat critic told National Review in an email, requesting anonymity to avoid losing friends and being canceled by the party. “The level of pandering to tiny minority groups has gotten so extreme that the party, in this email, seems to be pitting these tiny groups against each other. This is not merely representation of demographic groups — it is an odd game.”

Valentine told National Review that the complainant was “stupid,” an “idiot,” and probably a “racist and they don’t know it,” or “they probably do know it and they just don’t care.”

“Picking somebody based on their merit, or whatever, is patently absurd in America today, because it is not possible, because meritocracy is not real,” Valentine said. “This is a fact. It is not real. People get picked for who they know, how much money they have, that kind of thing.”

For years, the Democratic Party has faced accusations that it fetishizes identity politics over more important qualifications, and that its quest to build a coalition of racial minorities and progressive whites often devolves into tribalism and discrimination. As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden received criticism after he vowed to pick a black woman as his vice president, to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court, and to select cabinet members so his “administration will look like the country” — limiting potential picks not by their qualifications, but by their immutable characteristics.

Last year, former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard criticized Biden’s penchant for making key personnel decisions on the basis of race and gender, tweeting that, “Identity politics is destroying our country.”

While Valentine’s decision to impose race, gender, age, and trans-status qualifications on leaders of the state party’s LGBTQ caucus may be another small but extreme example of identity politics in action, it is not unprecedented. And in at least one respect, the desire to achieve gender balance among leaders, it is not at all unusual. Both major parties mandate it to some extent.

Valentine was surprised to receive pushback on the identity-based requirements for vice chairs, in part because the LGBTQ caucus leadership plan was modeled after the state party’s rules. The South Carolina Democratic Party mandates that its first vice chair be a different gender from its chair, its second vice chair be a different race from its chair, and the third vice chair be between 18 and 36 years old, according to party bylaws.

“The only difference is I added an extra chair, that’s all I did, an extra chair for trans and nonbinary people,” Valentine said.

“The trans experience and the nonbinary experience is not the same as the cis experience. A cis person cannot ever, ever, ever, ever understand what it means to be trans or nonbinary,” Valentine said. “It is just not possible. The same way that a white person cannot particularly speak out for a black experience when they haven’t really lived it.”

When reached on her cell phone, South Carolina Democratic Party chairwoman Christale Spain said she was not aware of the LGBTQ caucus’s election and identity mandates for leadership. Spain is the first black woman to lead the South Carolina Democratic Party.

Alyssa Bradley, a party spokeswoman, told National Review that the party was not aware that a fourth vice chair position for a trans or nonbinary leader had been added. “That’s not something that we enforce as the state party,” she said.

But she agreed that the other three LGBTQ vice-chair requirements mirror the state party’s. She denied that enforcing identity requirements for leadership positions is undemocratic.

“This was something that was agreed upon by the entire Democratic Party, so I don’t think this is an undemocratic process,” she said. “It’s something that’s trying to make sure we have enough diversity, so if we have a white male chairperson, the rest of our vice chairs and our leadership at least fall under the rest of what our electorate looks like, and is representative of the entire electorate, and not just a slim minority of the electorate.”

Despite this push for diversity, none of the top four South Carolina Democratic Party leaders are men. While the first vice chair is required to be a different gender from Spain, the position appears to be held by a white woman who identifies as queer and uses they/them pronouns. The second vice chair is a Hispanic woman, and the third chair is a young black woman.

The South Carolina Democratic Party’s intense focus on identity also appears to extend to other caucuses and committees. An online document showing the members of the “SCDP Delegate Selection Affirmative Action Committee” lists their names and demographic information — members are listed as African American, LGBTQIA+, Disability, Hispanic, and Youth.

“It’s like Schindler’s List,” the disgruntled Democrat said in an email. “Except, of course, Jewish people are not included. Neither are Asian people, from what I can see.”

While the South Carolina Democratic Party appears to take the identity requirements for leadership farther than most other state parties, most state Democratic parties do have some identity-based requirements for leadership posts, typically requiring that at least one vice chair be a different gender than the chair. Kansas Democrats, for example, mandate that “the vice-chairperson must be of differing gender as that of the chairperson.”

Michigan Democrats require that the two vice chairs of their party have different genders and races. Georgia Democrats require that the party’s first vice chair be of the opposite gender of the chair, and it also requires representation in leadership for racial groups that constitute 20 percent or more of the registered voters in the state.

According to its bylaws, the Democratic National Committee has a variety of rules requiring chairs and vice chairs to be different genders. The Republican National Committee also requires that members elect a “chairman and a co-chairman of the opposite sex,” its bylaws state.

The South Carolina GOP bylaws don’t explicitly mandate that the party’s leadership be gender diverse, though the bylaws do say that “preferably” county chairs and vice chairs will be “of the opposite sex.

Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s former governor and an Indian-American woman, and Senator Tim Scott, who is black, have both been critical of Democratic obsessions with race and with identity politics.

“As I set out on this new journey, I will simply say this — may the best woman win,” Haley said when announcing her candidacy in February.

The South Carolina Democratic critic gave the state party “points for transparency on this issue.” The identity-based requirements are “literally spelled out,” the critic wrote in an email.

Valentine said the decision to have identity requirements for the LGBTQ caucus was made to ensure that people with various experiences are represented in leadership.

“I’m just doing what’s best for the LGBTQ demographic, and what is best for everybody, to be honest,” Valentine said. “Because whatever affects us affects everybody.”