Win It Back PAC, which is affiliated with the conservative Club for Growth, released an ad on Monday that slams Kentucky Senate Republican candidate Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) for voting for a bill that forces corporate America to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
“America’s economy is no place for DEI,” the narrator in the ad said. “But Andy Barr voted to force DEI on corporate America, weakening our competitive edge, to woke-ifying work places, now he’s lying to hide it.”
“Barr put middle-class livelihoods at risk, declaring businesses, to go for broke, pushing woke. Andy Barr has no business in the Senate,” the narrator added.
Win It Back PAC cited that Barr in 2019 voted for H.R. 5084, the Improving Corporate Governance Through Diversity Act of 2019, sponsored by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY).
The CPAC Center for Legislative Accountability urged lawmakers to vote against the bill, stating that the bill would “outrageously expand the power of the federal government in order to send a chilling effect to companies striving to find officers for their boards.”
CPAC continued:
Under the bill, companies that are publicly-traded are forced to report the racial, ethnic and gender composition of their boards of directors and executive officers. ACU recognizes that this bill is designed to impose government control over private hiring decisions and ultimately radicalize private companies by shaming, and eventually forcing, private companies to create quotas for appointing board members based on factors other than merit. ACU believes in equal rights under the law for all, vehemently opposes discrimination and believes those who discriminate will face repercussions in the marketplace. ACU opposes this measure which is designed to harass companies and foster discrimination based on race and sex and opposed this bill. The House passed the bill on November 18, 2019 by a vote of 281-135. (The bill failed to advance in the Senate.) [Emphasis added]
This is the latest in the Club for Growth’s $2 million ad campaign targeting Barr in the U.S. Senate race to replace the outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief reported in September that Barr has voted to install DEI initiatives across the government, private sector, and even the Pentagon:
But there’s some incredible hypocrisy going on here with Barr and his campaign for Senate making these claims repeatedly. His voting record in Congress shows he is very much on the other side of these issues.
In fact, Barr voted for multiple different National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) bills that contained serious woke DEI policies for the U.S. military, including for the creation of a chief diversity officer at the Pentagon and the renaming of U.S. military bases to erase key moments from U.S. history. At least one of the plans that Barr voted for was so bad that, at the end of his first term in the White House back in late 2020, President Donald Trump vetoed the NDAA in part because of the woke insanity that Barr supported in it. It was so bad that many conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) ripped the plan as having been focused on “Democrat priorities.”
“This bill includes a host of partisan Democrat priorities unrelated to national security…like requiring the Department of Defense to rename military bases in a brazenly political attempt to erase our nation’s history,” Cruz said at the time.
“My Administration respects the legacy of the millions of American servicemen and women who have served with honor at these military bases,” Trump said at the time, vetoing the bill. “I have been clear in my opposition to politically motivated attempts like this to wash away history and to dishonor the immense progress our country has fought for in realizing our founding principles.”
