Andrew Yang has a simple idea for how the DNC can increase diversity at the next debate

Andrew Yang.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has a suggestion for the Democratic National Committee.

There's been a lot of wariness as the field whittles down about the lack of diversity among the party's top presidential candidates. So far, the five candidates to have qualified for January's debate in Iowa — Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former Vice President Joe Biden, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — are all white. And Yang, who has yet to qualify for the January event, was the only minority candidate at the last debate in December.

In a letter sent to DNC Chair Tom Perez obtained by The Daily Beast, Yang provided a pretty simple idea for how to increase diversity at the January debate. He just thinks the DNC should commission more qualifying polls.

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Of course, that would go a long way toward helping Yang, who has met the individual donor requirement, but is three qualifying polls short of reaching the threshold. Still, in the letter he tried to appeal to the party at large, saying that the an all-white debate stage was a "troubling prospect" for the DNC, and could even lead to "unfounded claims of bias and prejudice." More polls, he told Perez, "would provide an accurate snapshot of the current state of the race and where voters' hearts and minds are." Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.