The office of Hakeem Jeffries, the top-ranking Democrat in the United States House of Representatives, has released a fiery statement condemning a fellow lawmaker who endorsed a racist comment about him.
Tuesday’s statement came a day after US Representative Jen Kiggans appeared on a conservative radio talk show, where she discussed the ongoing battle over redistricting in the state.
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During the show, host Rich Herrera criticised Jeffries, who is from New York, for his support of an effort to redraw Virginia’s congressional map.
Herrera said Jeffries should either relocate to Virginia and run for public office, or “get your cotton-picking hands off of Virginia”.
“That’s right. Ditto,” Kiggans, a Republican, responded. “Yes. Yes to that.”
The term “cotton picking” is typically seen to have racist roots in the US, where enslaved Black people were used as labour on southern cotton plantations until the mid-19th century.
Kiggans later denied approving of Herrera’s statement. She argued that she was instead agreeing with the broad sentiment about Democrats’ efforts in state redistricting.
“The radio host should not have used that language and I do not — and did not — condone it,” she said.
“It was obvious to anyone listening that I was agreeing Hakeem Jefferies should stay out of Virginia.”
Still, a Jeffries spokesperson, Christie Stephenson, vehemently condemned Kiggans on Tuesday.
“Extremists who endorse disgusting, vile and racist language are pathetic,” Stephenson said.
“Jen Kiggans has no interest in our nation’s progress toward a multiracial democracy and apparently craves a return to the days of Jim Crow racial oppression in the South.”
Top Democrats, including US Minority Whip Katherine Clark and California Governor Gavin Newsom, have called on Kiggans to resign.
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) also posted a clip of the radio exchange on the social media platform X, writing: “Did she agree with him? Yes. Is this racist? Yes. Should she resign? Yes to that, too.”
The radio interview comes after US President Donald Trump, in February, posted a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife, former First Lady Michelle Obama, as primates.
Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator in the US, condemned the video as the “most racist thing I’ve ever seen”. The video was later removed, with the White House blaming a staffer for posting it to Trump’s account.
The latest incident comes amid a nationwide battle over redistricting, before the November’s critical midterm elections.
Normally, states redraw their electoral maps once a decade to reflect the latest census results. But last year, the Trump administration called on the Texas legislature to pass a new congressional map to give the Republican Party a boost at the polls.
Since then, several states have sought to redraw their maps to benefit one party or the other.
In Virginia, voters approved a redrawn map in April that would have increased the number of Democrat-leaning districts. However, the state’s Supreme Court has since invalidated the map. Democrats have appealed to the US Supreme Court to intervene.
Partisan gerrymandering — or the manipulation of electoral maps for political aims — is not illegal under US law. But critics have denounced the practice as undemocratic.
Discrimination based on race, however, is outlawed in the US, and laws like the Voting Rights Act of 1973 have been used to ensure fair representation at the ballot box.
But a US Supreme Court decision in late April has weakened how that law may be enforced. The high court struck down a key provision in the Voting Rights Act, making it easier to break up predominantly Black congressional districts, except in cases where there are explicitly racist motivations.
Civil rights groups have charged that such motivations would be near impossible to prove. They also argue the ruling could be used to dilute the voting power of Black Americans, who have historically skewed Democratic.
Republican lawmakers in Tennessee, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina have pursued efforts to redraw their maps in light of the ruling.
