

Kirkmeyer said, was not only about economic opportunity but freedom, connecting the words with Republican opposition to Covid-related mask mandates. She paid her way through college by raising and selling a herd of eight milk cows, yearlings and heifer calves.

Kirkmeyer grew up on a dairy farm, the sixth of seven children in a family that often struggled. “I think the left is far more pessimistic than Republicans are about the American dream,” said Representative Yvette Herrell, a New Mexico Republican who is Cherokee and the third Native American woman ever elected to Congress.īut this latest iteration of the dream has become a rhetorical catchall for Republicans' policy positions.īarbara Kirkmeyer, a Republican state lawmaker in Colorado running in a heated House race, embraces the American dream as the theme of her personal story.

Republicans dispute that their references to “the American dream” promote exclusion and say they are using the phrase the same way politicians have used it for decades - to signal hope and opportunity. “On the campaign trail, I used to say, if your family came to this country seeking hope there is a good chance that your family is a lot like my family, and it would be the biggest honor of my life to be your attorney general,” said Mr. “The American dream” was a marquee theme in two winning Republican campaigns in Virginia last year: the races by Winsome Earle-Sears, a Jamaica-born Marine veteran who is now the first woman of color to serve as the state’s lieutenant governor, and Mr. “In Congress, I will fight to defend the American dream,” said Yesli Vega, a former police officer who is the daughter of civil-war refugees from El Salvador and who is running for a House seat in Virginia, posted on Twitter. Several other House hopefuls, many of them Latinas, frequently cite the words in social media posts, digital ads, campaign literature and speeches. Television ads for more than a dozen Republican candidates in statewide, House and Senate campaigns - more than half of whom are people of color - cite the phrase, according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking firm. We analyzed the ads they're using to do it. primaries, believing they'll be easier to defeat in November.
