Virginia Republican congresswoman Jen Kiggans is facing demands from Democrats that she step down after she voiced agreement with a conservative radio host who used a phrase widely seen as racist when attacking House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.
During an appearance on Richmond's Morning News on Monday, radio host Rich Herrera told Jeffries to "get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia" if he would not move to the state and run for office there. Kiggans responded by saying "That's right. Ditto, yes, yes to that."
The term "cotton-picking" carries deep racial connotations rooted in American slavery, when enslaved Black people were forced to harvest cotton. Multiple Democratic leaders quickly seized on Kiggans's response as endorsement of racist language.
"Now they are using brazenly racist language to attack Black leaders," said Katherine Clark, the House minority whip, in a post on social media. California Governor Gavin Newsom's office echoed the call for consequences, stating that "every Republican should be denouncing this racist statement."
Kiggans moved to contain the damage with a statement denying she had backed the host's words. "The radio host should not have used that language and I do not and did not condone it," she wrote. "It was obvious to anyone listening that I was agreeing Hakeem Jeffries should stay out of Virginia."
Jeffries, the first Black American to lead a party in Congress, had not publicly responded to the remarks as of late Monday.
Aaron Rouse, a Democratic Virginia state senator, was among those expressing outrage. "We are no longer enslaved on plantations. We now hold positions of power our ancestors fought for," Rouse said in a statement.
The controversy erupts as Virginia becomes a battleground in the broader fight over congressional districts heading into November's midterm elections. In April, Virginia voters approved a Democratic-drawn congressional map that could have flipped four Republican House seats. But the state supreme court threw out those results in May, ruling that Democratic lawmakers had not followed proper procedures when placing the referendum on the ballot.
Kiggans is fighting for her seat against Democrat Elaine Luria, a former congresswoman who served on the committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol riot. With Republicans holding paper-thin majorities in both chambers of Congress, the Virginia race has taken on added significance as both parties vie for control going into the fall elections.
Author James Rodriguez: "Kiggans's attempt to parse her way out of this won't fly with voters paying attention to what she said and when she said it."
Comments