| Author |
Message |
    
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3280
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 01, 2006 - 12:57 pm: | 
|
From the Baltimore Sun
Maryland votes 2006
Will blacks show up for Democrats?
By Andrew A. Green
Sun reporter
October 1, 2006
Democrats are fretting that after watching two high-profile African-Americans lose primary battles for spots on their statewide ticket, black voters, the key to the party's chances in November, won't bother to vote.
Maryland Republicans are practically gleeful at the Democrats' situation. Much of the GOP's message less than six weeks before the election centers on the diversity of its statewide ticket, which features Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, an African-American, as its candidate for U.S. Senate, as well as women running for lieutenant governor and comptroller. The party is promoting the idea that Democrats take minorities - blacks in particular - for granted.
In the past few days, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s re-election campaign has targeted black voters with an appeal aimed at eroding support for his Democratic opponent, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, in the black community. A radio advertisement criticizes the city Police Department for large numbers of nuisance arrests that do not result in charges. The mayor and the city's police chief have defended the department's practices.
Democrats, including some of the party's top African-American leaders, insist that the GOP's claims to be the party of diversity are absurd. But they also say they worry that African-Americans, who historically turn out in low numbers, are seeing nothing in this election that will inspire them to vote.
"The Democratic Party has a diversity issue, and there's just no nice way to put it," said Del. Dereck E. Davis, a Prince George's County Democrat who is African-American and who chairs the House Economic Matters Committee.
"Will that result in some sort of defection from the party?" Davis said. "I don't think that's likely going to happen. But I think what the party probably has to be more concerned about is turnout. ... I'm not sure if the voters are there yet in the kind of numbers I think you're going to need."
The numbers Blacks make up about 29 percent of Maryland's population, according to the U.S. Census - the fifth-highest proportion in the country. A recent Sun poll shows that African-American voters still overwhelmingly support Democrats, although Ehrlich and Steele have made inroads.
The poll showed that O'Malley is leading Ehrlich among black voters, 71 percent to 16 percent. The margin for Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin against Steele is smaller, 65 percent to 24 percent. Ehrlich and O'Malley are white, though the mayor's running mate, Del. Anthony G. Brown, is black.
But the question for Democrats is not whether blacks will support their candidates but how many of them will vote, said Keith Haller, the president of Potomac Inc., which conducted the poll for The Sun.
The poll found both O'Malley and Cardin in the lead, but that conclusion - particularly for the mayor - rests on the assumption that nearly one in five voters will be black, Haller said.
That's about the proportion in previous gubernatorial elections, but Haller doubts that the numbers will be that high this year.
"If African-American turnout drops by 10 or 15 percent, it has a dramatic effect on the Democrats' prospects," he said.
Both parties have spent much of the time since the September primary talking about black turnout, largely because Democrats had the opportunity to nominate one of the nation's most charismatic African-American leaders for U.S. Senate but didn't.
Since his narrow defeat in the primary, former congressman and NAACP head Kweisi Mfume has been at the center of the debate over black turnout, both for what he has said and for what Republicans have said about him.
Republicans are quick to point to comments Mfume made more than a year ago criticizing the party's white leaders for attempting a "coronation" of Cardin - who is white - for the Senate nomination.
Since the primary, Mfume has made no complaints about his treatment by party leadership, and he has publicly endorsed Cardin.
But at a College Park rally last week featuring the national Democratic Party's top African-American star, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Mfume cautioned the party that it needs to make clear to voters that it was not aiming for a mostly white ticket, and that the race of the nominees does not represent the diversity of the party or how it will be led in the future.
In an interview last week with D. Morton Glover, an African-American journalist who runs the Web site www.bmorenews .com, Mfume expounded on the problems the party faces in attracting black voters after he and Stuart O. Simms, a candidate for attorney general, lost their primary bids. The problem is compounded by the resources and attention that the national Republican Party is showering on Steele, Mfume said.
"The juxtaposition is interesting, daunting and poses significant challenges to the party of inclusion and diversity," Mfume said.
"I think the party has a responsibility to speak to that," Mfume said. "I'm convinced the party has to find a way to do that and it has to do that convincingly ... to make sure people turn out in large numbers to vote."
Ehrlich has launched an ad on black radio stations that appears designed not to boost support for Ehrlich but to diminish the African-American vote for O'Malley.
In the ad, prominent black lawyer William H. "Billy" Murphy Jr., an Ehrlich ally, spends 55 seconds outlining his "principled reasons" to not vote for O'Malley. No. 1 on the list is that city police arrest thousands of blacks every year who are never charged with a crime. In the last five seconds of the ad, Murphy urges listeners to join him in voting for Ehrlich, the "better alternative," though he gives no reasons why.
GOP diversity Ehrlich and other party leaders have also made the diversity of their ticket a central part of their appeal. At a GOP dinner last month, Ehrlich said the diversity on his ticket is real, not the "phony inclusiveness" that Democrats practice. His running mate, Disabilities Secretary Kristen Cox, who is blind, said the Republican ticket "represents the face of Maryland in a way no other party in the history of Maryland has."
Many political observers in the state's black community say low African-American turnout is responsible for Ehrlich's 2002 victory. While Ehrlich picked Steele as his running mate, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend passed over qualified blacks to pick a white man.
It is no coincidence that O'Malley picked Brown for his running mate, pairing himself with an up-and-coming leader from Prince George's County, the majority-black jurisdiction that is home to both Steele and the state's largest concentration of Democrats.
Brown has the potential to motivate black voters in Prince George's - but only if the party realizes how much work needs to be done there, said Davis, the committee chairman from the county.
"Anthony is somebody who the community is definitely proud of, and I think if he's prominently featured and given a prominent role, not just for his own [contest] but really for the other statewide races as well, I think he can be very beneficial to the party," Davis said. "But he can't do it alone."
The Republican response is that a black lieutenant governor nominee is yesterday's news. Members of the GOP often gloss over Brown in calling the Democratic ticket "four white guys," meaning O'Malley, Cardin and the party's candidates for attorney general and comptroller, Montgomery County State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler and Del. Peter Franchot.
Democrats - including Mfume - reject the notion that the presence of only one minority candidate on their statewide ticket indicates anything about the relative inclusiveness of the two parties. There are no black Republicans in the legislature or in prominent elected positions in local governments in Maryland, the Democrats point out.
"Let's look at the Republicans," said City Councilman Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr., who is African-American and a vice chairman of the state Democratic Party. "How many candidates do they have for state Senate who are African-American? How many candidates do they have for the House of Delegates that are African-American, or some of the other races across the state for sheriff and things like that? You've got to look at the big picture."
A bright spot for the Democrats on the diversity front came in Montgomery County, where Isiah "Ike" Leggett, who is black, won the party's nomination for county executive. He is heavily favored to be the first African-American to lead a majority-white jurisdiction in Maryland.
Still, black leaders say the party faces some steep obstacles.
In most African-American communities in the state, there are no competitive races for local and legislative offices for the general election, meaning there will be less incentive for bottom-of-the-ticket candidates to turn out their supporters.
Prince George's County was host to some bitter primary battles that left the party divided there.
Will votes be counted? Most challenging of all, problems in the operation of the primary election have raised doubts among many voters about whether their ballots will be counted.
That's a particular problem in the black community, Mitchell said, because of the legacy of racial discrimination at the polls.
In the past, Democrats have made aggressive and sometimes controversial efforts to get African-American voters to the polls by playing off their anxieties.
The most prominent recent example came in the 1998 gubernatorial race when Democrats painted Republican nominee Ellen Sauerbrey as a racist through fliers and other materials depicting her as an enemy of civil rights.
"The difference was race," said Julius Henson, the African-American campaign consultant who masterminded that effort.
"When I said Ellen Sauerbrey was against civil rights, black people were lining up at 10 a.m., they were wrapped around the corner. Black people vote in the evening, and when they were wrapped around the corner at 10 a.m., we knew it was over."
Henson, a polarizing figure in state politics who was fired from the Townsend campaign after he called Ehrlich a Nazi, said it's impossible to do to the governor what Henson did to Sauerbrey.
Ehrlich inoculated himself by picking Steele as his running mate, Henson said, so the question in this election is who will spend the money on black TV and radio stations and in the community to mobilize African-American turnout.
"That was the difference last time and will be the difference again," Henson said. "Either one of these guys who can manage to do this to some degree better than the other one will win."
andy.green@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2006, The Baltimore Sun | Get Sun home delivery
> Get news on your mobile device at www.baltimoresun.com
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-te.md.turnout01oct01,0,5591436.story? coll=bal-home-headlines |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3281
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 01, 2006 - 01:01 pm: |
|
Young Blacks "the Most Ready to Vote for Change"
http://www.blackcollegewire.org/news/060928_voter-poll/
By Vanessa Mizell
Black College Wire
Young black voters have placed domestic issues as their top concern, higher than the war in Iraq, according to a poll keyed to the November midterm elections.
The study by Young Voter Strategies, an organization affiliated with George Washington University, found that employment, the economy and education and its costs weighed heavily for 35 percent of black voters ages 18 to 30. When voters of all races in the age group were counted, 30 percent said the economy was the prime concern.
The poll also found that young black voters and their counterparts said candidates were not speaking enough about issues relevant to their demographic. Young voters of all races wanted to hear more about health care, job creation, college affordability, energy prices and homeland security. Job creation ranked slightly higher than college affordability within the black voting group. Among these voters, job creation ranked 8.8 on a 10 point scale; more than the 6.8 in the overall ranking.
African Americans also stood out in other findings of the poll, released Sept. 20. Eighty-five percent said they were registered, compared with 80 percent overall. Young blacks were rated the group most enthused about the elections and the strongest supporters of the Democrats. More than 60 percent identified as Democrats contrasted with just under 15 percent as Republican. Among young voters overall, 43 percent were Democrat and 22 percent Republican.
Joshua Ulibarri, vice president of Lake Research Partners, which helped conduct the poll, said young blacks' strong enthusiasm for the upcoming election was rooted in frustration about the direction of the country.
"Young African Americans are the most ready to vote for change," Ulibarri said. "There's a growing frustration with the president and they are the most disappointed in the direction of the country."
Nearly half the young black voters said they were against the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq, compared with 30 percent of all voters in that age group.
Ulibarri added that universities have been a main target for campaigning and that voter registration teams were working heavily in African American communities.
The findings also foreshadow the war on terror as an Election Day concern for young black voters. The war in Iraq ranked third and homeland security fifth as the issue young black voters wanted to hear more about from politicians.
The poll findings may be good news for such Democrats as Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee urged Howard University students to become more concerned about national security.
National security "needs to be a concern," Kerry said in an interview after his Sept. 14 speech. "You can't vote the issues one by one. You have to vote all of them." He explained that voting for a candidate supports not just his or her view on domestic issues but on national security as well.
"We need you to go out and connect the dots," Kerry said in the speech. "Join a campaign, talk to a neighbor, defeat the apathy and say, 'I believe in my country."
The president of Howard's College Democrats, Evan Brunson, said then, "I think it's erroneous to think that we should be focused on one issue and not the other," speaking of African Americans. "The fight against terrorism is our fight too."
Of the 500 surveyed in the poll, 12 percent were black, reflecting the African American percentage of the population. An additional 75 blacks were surveyed so the firm could "be more confident in the data," according to Ulibarri.
Vanessa Mizell, a Black College Wire summer intern, is a Howard University student who writes for the Hilltop.
Posted Sept. 28, 2006 |
Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3282
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 01, 2006 - 01:09 pm: |
|
Blacks Increasing Political Presence in Diversifying County
Leggett Says Broad Support Shows Voters Have 'Moved Beyond the Question of Race'
By Cameron W. Barr
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 1, 2006; C05
In Montgomery County, where African Americans make up about one in seven residents, Isiah "Ike" Leggett is positioned to become one of the few black politicians elected to lead a large, majority-white suburban county.
Leggett won the Democratic nomination for county executive in the Sept. 12 primary by capturing convincing majorities in areas from exclusive Potomac and rural Damascus to urbanized, racially diverse downtown Silver Spring. In some respects, he said, the county's voters "have moved beyond the question of race."
Also on the ballot in November, Democrat Valerie Ervin could become the first African American woman elected to the County Council in heavily Democratic Montgomery.
Their primary victories are the high points so far in a pivotal political year for African Americans in the county, where the predominantly white leadership has long failed to reflect an increasingly multi-hued population.
The county is 44.5 percent minority, according to a 2005 census update survey conducted by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, up from 33.7 percent in 1997.
But the five county executives who have served since Montgomery's government was reorganized in 1968 have all been white men. And only two non-whites, Leggett and Dominican American council member Tom Perez (D-Silver Spring), have been elected to the council, a nine-member panel that was expanded from seven members in 1990.
"We're finally seeing this profusion of people of color, of varying ethnicities, really engage in the political process," said Hugh Bailey, one of four African American candidates who ran unsuccessfully this year for the Democratic nomination for an at-large seat on the council.
This year marked the first time more than a couple African Americans sought council seats, much less the county executive's job. In the Sept. 12 primary, seven African Americans sought Democratic nominations for those offices: Leggett and Ervin, the four at-large candidates, and Rockville City Council member Robert E. Dorsey, who ran unsuccessfully in the district that represents Rockville and Gaithersburg. Adol T. Owen-Williams II won a Republican nomination for an at-large seat but dropped out of the race to make room for a white candidate who party leaders say has a better chance of winning in November.
Leggett said the campaign for the Democratic nomination for county executive was race-neutral because the other candidates, principally council member Steven A. Silverman (D-At Large), "didn't play to" race and because of the maturity of the county's electorate. Leggett is seen as a strong favorite over GOP candidate Chuck Floyd and independent Robin Ficker in the November general election.
Leggett won all but six of the approximately 90 precincts where the voting-age population is more than 75 percent non-Hispanic white, according to an analysis of primary results correlated with census data provided by his campaign. The analysis showed that Leggett also won all of the approximately 30 precincts where the voting-age population is more than 25 percent non-Hispanic black. Demographic data were not available for all precincts.
Ron Walters, director of the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, said the tone and the results of the campaign might say less about the county and more about Leggett, "who has been able to build a nonracial record in Montgomery County."
In 1985, when Leggett first ran for council, he didn't include pictures of himself in his campaign literature for the first six months of the campaign so voters would concentrate on his qualifications for office rather than his skin color. Even today, he says the county executive job appeals to him because Montgomery remains a majority-white jurisdiction, arguing that the challenge for minority politicians is to win power in constituencies that are not dominated by their racial or ethnic groups.
Leggett has developed a smooth, consensus-building style and has emphasized issues that resonate across the county. During his time on the council, for example, he won passage of a smoking ban, and in his campaign for executive he called for slowing the pace of growth.
Ron Sims, an African American who is in his third term as county executive of Washington's King County, a predominantly white jurisdiction outside Seattle, said he is the first black elected to lead a large, majority-white suburban jurisdiction.
"Race is a factor, I know it is," Sims said. "And you overcome it with excellence so people feel confident in your abilities."
David A. Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and an expert on black voting trends, said Leggett and some other black politicians are different from an older generation of office seekers who concentrated on winning offices in jurisdictions with black majorities.
"If you are ambitious, if you want to be a senator or a governor or president, you of necessity have to appeal to a fairly significant number of white voters," Bositis said.
Walters said blacks in Montgomery have not been forced to mobilize politically as much as they have elsewhere, in part because the county has less of a troubled history of racism than do Prince George's County or the District.
"Montgomery County is an interesting place," Ervin said, "where there is a lot of affluence in the African American community and there is a lot of acceptance of African Americans in the broad social and political context."
Still, she said, the nature and outcome of Leggett's campaign for county executive "does not mean that racism is not alive and well" in Montgomery. Ervin won the nomination for the council district that includes Takoma Park and Silver Spring.
While Leggett says that race was a "non-story" in his own campaign, he also says that blacks should have aggregated their political power in the at-large council races. Four African Americans unsuccessfully sought four Democratic at-large nominations in a field of 17 candidates that included three incumbents.
Black Democrats made a "strategic error" by not putting their energy and fundraising power behind a single at-large candidate, Leggett said.
That analysis infuriates the Rev. Donell Peterman, an African American minister in Silver Spring who was appointed to a seat on the council in July 2002 on the condition that he not seek election that year. This year, he sought an at-large seat. "I thought it was insulting anytime someone said there are too many of you all," said Peterman, referring to the four African Americans seeking at-large Democratic nominations.
"We did lack black unity within our own community," he said, noting that the African American Democratic Club in the county endorsed only two of the four black at-large candidates. Ann De Lacy, the club's president, said Peterman did not complete a questionnaire that was part of the endorsement process. He placed last, with 1.7 percent of the vote.
She also disagrees with Leggett's contention that black Democrats should have backed only one at-large candidate. The club endorsed Bailey, a county workforce development manager, and education lobbyist Robert "Bo" Newsome because they both appeared to be viable candidates who would represent the interests of African Americans, she said. "The feeling was we couldn't pick one over the other," she said.
Newsome and Bailey finished sixth and seventh, respectively, among the 17 contenders for the at-large nominations.
Bailey was endorsed by a group of longtime African American leaders in the county, but in his view, the support came too late to make much of a difference. He also said that a likely victory by Ervin took some pressure off endorsing organizations to consider diversity in making their selections in other council races. The attitude Bailey detected was that "we're gonna get one" in Ervin so was there was less need to endorse another black candidate.
"We have to aggressively move past the idea that when you have more than one African American or more than one of any ethnic group, it's a negative," Bailey said.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/30/AR2006093000887. html |
Nolanfane
Newbie Poster
Username: Nolanfane
Post Number: 19
Registered: 09-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, October 01, 2006 - 02:54 pm: |
|
I'm so sick of the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.
Madness!
|
|
Email This Page