A former campaign aide to Congressman Joe Heck, currently running for U.S. Senate in Nevada, raised eyebrows this week when he told the world via Twitter, “Catherine is about as Mexican as I am. It’s relevant when applying for scholarhsips…or running for #nvsen.”
I’m guessing Tom McAllister didn’t go to school on a spelling scholarship.
That aside, it’s an odd attack to make on a woman who’s grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico. That pretty much means “Mexican” figures into her ethnicity.
It’s hard to know if McAllister feels Cortez Masto isn’t “Mexican” enough for him to register on the Hispanic scale or what. It reminds me of the folks who said Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, wasn’t “black enough” to be called black.
No matter how you slice it, it’s distasteful to bring questions of ethnicity into play here. Twenty-seven percent of Nevadan voters are Hispanic. This is sure to sound “Trumpian” to many of those voters.
Running to replace retiring Sen. Harry Reid, Cortez Masto would be the first Latina elected to the U.S. Senate.
