Watts’ New Group Gives GOP Valuable ‘Insight’
J.C. Watts’ Nonprofit Seeks to Boost GOP Credibility With Minorities
By David M. Drucker, Roll Call Staff
Feb. 20, 2013
Watts said he hopes his organization can help his party build up its outreach to ethnic minorities.
As Republicans continue to grapple with their diversity problem, former Rep. J.C. Watts has moved to fill at least one void by launching a nonprofit charged with recruiting and placing ethnic minority staffers in GOP congressional offices.
Watts, an Oklahoma Republican and African-American who left Congress 10 years ago, said it could take years for his party to build the kind of outreach with ethnic minorities capable of countering Democrats’ success with such groups, which helped propel the party’s candidates to key victories in last year’s elections. Now a lobbyist, Watts hopes that his new organization, Insight, is one solution to a multifaceted problem.
“I am not offended by the words outreach, tolerance and diversity. I don’t see those as liberal code words,” Watts said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
Watts said his new organization, a 501(c)(4), would formalize an event that he has held in Haymarket, Va., for the past three years that served to connect African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities interested in working for Republicans on Capitol Hill with GOP offices. The event has also served to help such individuals network with congressional offices and leaders of private-sector companies and community groups.