There is a very interesting article on RadarOnline that discusses the subject of African American Republicans. I have two exerpts that I want to highlight...At a Washington, D.C., gathering held early in September by Republicans for Black Empowerment, candidates from Ohio, New York, and North Carolina simmered and groused about the GOP's strategy.I will say this: in the last election cycle in which he ran, no candidate got more money from the Ohio GOP than Ken Blackwell. They were committed to his election at every stage of his career.
"I very much regret that Mr. Butler could not be here tonight," Blackwell advisor Eric Seabrook told the crowd, eulogizing the felled Michigan candidate. "We need to work to build the Republican Party, but we also need to hold the Republican Party accountable."
Seabrook didn't need to elaborate. Everybody knows that Ohio Republicans aren't throwing their weight behind Blackwell in the gubernatorial election, and that the marquee moneymen have slapped Do Not Resuscitate stickers on him and Lynn Swann. Long-shot congressional candidate Ada Fisher had even harsher words for the GOP: "Sure, the national party will 'support' black candidates. They just won't give them any money!"
Until now.
The party officials have all come out and said what needed to be said. There were plenty of calls for unity. The problem is, their candidate lost the primary and there are still a number of "Republicans" who can't seem to get over it.
Ken Blackwell has always been an outsider in this group and his race has had nothing to do with it. Blackwell has been a frequent critic of the Ohio GOP that has allowed Ohio to sink to 49th out of 50 states in business climate. Ohio has serious problems, and the status quo was not going to get the job done. Ohio Republican electorate recognized that. Did the powers that be in the Republican Party?
The other bit I wanted to feature is this bit:
According to Tony Williams, a city council candidate in Washington, D.C., the GOP is hopeless in statewide races like Ohio's because it thinks it can inspire black voters with an aggressive, top-down pitch. If black Republicans started competing for local offices, like school boards and city halls, where Democrats have dominated since the 1960s, they would establish far greater inroads toward stealing a traditional Democratic base.This is similar advice that I give my conservative friends wanting to advance the agenda. All politics is local, as the saying goes; and if you want to effect change on a larger stage, you have to start at home... Good advice for African American Republicans, conservatives, and anybody else wanting to get invloved.
"You don't go to the voters and press the fact that you're a Republican," says Williams, the son of Fox News' liberal pundit Juan Williams. "You contest these local elections, in these cities where Republicans don't compete. You talk about crime and education and taxes; you get elected. And after you serve a few terms, voters step back and realize, 'I know this guy, I like this guy, he works on the problems I want solved, and he's a Republican? Well, maybe I'm a Republican.'"
If they really want to court the African-American vote, Republicans must first acknowledge—if only to themselves—that they spent the '70s and '80s alienating, and in some cases demonizing, black voters; that their policies (school choice, Social Security privatization) haven't sold with blacks as well as the GOP hoped they would; and that the last decade of outreach has been wasted. Of course, this isn't the quick-fix Republicans want. It's more like a surgeon's advice to the victim of a botched facelift: multiple expensive operations over many, many years. Let the healing begin.
