For black Republicans, race complicates the campaign
September 19, 2008
JOY-ANN REID, South Florida Times
- Clarence McKee says that if there are black Republicans who are tempted to support Barack Obama’s historic run for president, he’s not one of them.
“I’m proud of the guy; great achievement,’’ said McKee, who is one of Florida’s most prominent black members of the GOP. “But black people and liberals didn’t support (former Maryland Lieutenant Governor) Michael Steele when he ran for the Senate, and they didn’t support (NFL Hall of Fame receiver) Lynn Swann when he ran (for Pennsylvania governor in 2006), so why should black Republicans support Obama just because he’s black?’’
For McKee, who is the communications director for the Broward County Republican Party, issues like taxes, school choice and the war on terror are more important. Besides, he says, the Illinois senator would be “like Jimmy Carter’’ as president: too liberal. He says black voters are only hurting themselves by being so transparent in their loyalty to one political party.
“We’re the only voter group that shows our ‘hole card’ before the game starts,’’ he said, putting it in Blackjack terms. “Jewish voters are in play; Hispanic voters are in play; women and blue collar voters are in play. The only people not in play are black people.’’
Sebelius says GOP using racial ‘code language’
September 16, 2008
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accused Republicans on Tuesday of injecting race into the presidential campaign, arguing that they are using “code language” to convince Midwesterners that Democrat Barack Obama is different from them.
“Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?” Sebelius asked with sarcasm. “(Republicans) are not going to go lightly into the darkness.”
Sebelius was responding to a question from the audience at the Iowa City Public Library about the tenacity of Democrats and whether they would fight for victory as hard as Republicans in the closing weeks of the election.
She did not elaborate on her comment.
Sebelius said recent presidential campaign polling in the Upper Midwest shows the region is still in play for both parties. She noted that polls indicate Obama has a wide lead in Iowa over Republican John McCain but that the race is a dead heat in Minnesota.
The Democratic governor said she remains optimistic that Obama will carry the region because she believes tax issues, energy policy and health care reform all favor the Democrat. She said the Obama campaign will focus on the economy and try to tie McCain’s tax and economic plans to President Bush’s policies.
“Iowa is likely to be a state that’s decided by a couple percentage points either way,” Sebelius said. “Sen. McCain’s on his way here Thursday. He clearly feels that Iowa is in play.”
Sebelius talked about a “neighborhood-by-neighborhood ground game” strategy to win votes in the region, but she acknowledged that it won’t be an easy fight.
In Minnesota, a Minneapolis Star Tribune poll on Sunday showed each candidate is supported by 45 percent of likely voters in the state. That’s a dramatic improvement for McCain from a Star Tribune poll in May that found him trailing Obama in the state by 13 percentage points.
“Minnesota is a state that’s likely to be close,” Sebelius said.
NIGEL DUARA (AP)
Michigan Dems file lawsuit against Macomb Co. GOP
September 16, 2008
Democrats in Michigan are trying to block what they call a Republican effort to deny voting rights to people facing foreclosure.
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and several voters filed Tuesday for an injunction to prohibit the GOP from challenging Michigan voters whose homes are on foreclosure lists. Republicans say they are doing no such thing.
Macomb County Republican Party Chairman James Carabelli denied last week that he had told a writer for the liberal Web site MichiganMessenger.com that he planned to make sure no one on a list of foreclosed homes voted in his county. “The story is not true,” he said.
Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer said Republicans have tried in the past to discourage Democratic voters at polling stations and, “I simply do not believe his denial. This fits the pattern we’ve seen here in Michigan.”
Obama campaign general counsel Bob Bauer said any “lose your home, lose your vote” tactic creates an atmosphere of intimidation that could drive voters from the polls. State Republicans said the accusation makes no sense because the lists don’t give them information on where a voter lives.
Brewer said more than 11,000 homes in Michigan received a foreclosure notice in July. The state has one of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates, and figures show more than half of the foreclosed homes are owned by blacks, who as a group lean to Obama and Democrats.
Macomb County, north of Detroit, is a swing area in presidential elections and capable of tipping the battleground state either way. Both Obama and Republican rival John McCain have campaigned in the county.
KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN (AP)
GOP plans will disqualify blacks from voting
September 16, 2008
“The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day,” according to a recent report in The Michigan Messenger.
The chairman, it seems, knows his racial history, and against this backdrop, he and the party plan to use the knowledge to revive Jim Crow. In the 1890’s many southern states employed an institutional approach to black voter disenfranchisement. Among the most popular tools were: the grandfather clause, which made clear that the right to vote did not apply to blacks because in order to have this right one must have been a citizen or a descendant of a citizen who had the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867.
Christopher J. Metzler, The Daily Voice
The GOP’s diversity challenge: African-American voters
September 11, 2008
Wiley Henry, Tri-State Defender
- The 2008 Republican National Convention had the undivided attention of an African-American man on a mission: electing Arizona Sen. John McCain as the nation’s 44th president.
Paul Boyd is stumping for the GOP ticket of McCain and vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. He felt that the media intentionally made the crowd seem less diverse at the Republican convention. “I can assure you there were more black faces in the crowd than what the media showed on television,” Boyd said.
However, statistics released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a renowned Washington-based research and public policy institution that focuses on issues of concern to African Americans and communities of color, have sounded an alarm for Republican Party leaders.
After seating a record number of African-American delegates in 2004, the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul had the lowest black representation in 40 years, the Center reported. The 36 African-American delegates in 2008 represented only 1.5 percent of the party’s total delegate count. That’s a 78.4 percent decline from 2004, when 164 black delegates participated at the Republican Convention.
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