Republican Congressional candidate Sara Hart Weir on Wednesday morning said that the 2020 election is not a “beauty pageant” in response to social media criticism that said Republicans were recruiting good-looking women to run for office.
“The last time I checked, the November 2020 election isn’t a beauty pageant,” Weir told talk-show host Pete Mundo on KCMO radio.
“The November 2020 election will actually be about Sharice Davids versus Sara Weir,” she said. “This is a leadership question matchup, not a beauty pageant.”
Weir called the tweets by a southern Johnson County political activist “unfortunate.”
She said she has spent her adult life protecting her best friend Kasey, who has Down syndrome, from discrimination.
“Now women are talking (about) other women about appearances,” she said.
Weir said she would encourage Elizabeth Arnold, who tweeted the remarks, to look at her website to see what she has done while working to help people with disabilities as the chief executive of the National Down Syndrome Society.
Arnold is a former co-steering member of Stand Up Blue Valley, a political action committee formed to advocate for education and backed moderate Republicans and Democrats.
In response to Weir announcing that she would run for Congress in the Kansas 3rd District, Arnold tweeted out a thread about the GOP objective of recruiting female candidates.
“Do you think it is a coincidence Kansas Republicans are recruiting attractive young women to run for office?” Arnold tweeted.
“They learned it works in local and state school board races and #ksleg races, so they’re sticking with a winning strategy,” she wrote.
She added, “Nobody expects an inoffensive, seemingly moderate, suburban mom-type to be a complete radically extreme conservative, right?
“They’re insidious b/c they deploy a façade of feminism to lend a veneer of acceptability to the GOP’s racism, corruption & antisocial policies,” Arnold wrote.
“These white wealthy women wear the mantle of respectable conventionality making them the perfect apologists and protectors of abusers. They provide cover for those who abuse the law, ethics, morals and other humans. They dress up policies that abuse our fellow citizens.”
She further wrote that the GOP knows its “brand stands for hate, lawlessness, authoritarianism and supremacy.” She said the Republican Party knows it can only win support through “trickery.”
Arnold could not be reached late Wednesday afternoon about Weir’s remarks.
The thread has generated a stir on social media, drawing rebukes from the National Republican Congressional Committee, Republican state Rep. Tory Arnberger and Shannon Golden, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party.
“How can Democrats preach #feminism yet constantly dismiss women who think differently?” Golden tweeted in response. “This is just another example of the left attempting to intimidate conservative women into silence – we will not let them.”
