Dean Faces Uphill Battle in Courting S.C. Blacks
Democratic Presidential Contender's Claim About Race Meets Some Skepticism in Key Primary State
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 20, 2003; Page A08
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- When a waitress at Bert's Bar and Grill slipped a plate of spareribs between Thomas Dameron's thick forearms, he barely seemed to notice. He was already trying to digest something Howard Dean had said.
It was the former Vermont governor's claim that he is "the only white politician that ever talks about race in front of white audiences," made at the Sept. 9 debate among the Democratic presidential candidates. The debate was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus Institute and Fox News.
"Did he really say that?" Dameron asked.
Then his face went blank. "If he has to ring his own bell, then his bell must not be very loud," the 44-year-old technical engineer said.
In the campaign for the Democratic nomination, the reactions of Dameron and other black South Carolinians will become increasingly important through the fall: The state's Feb. 3 presidential primary will be the first in which African Americans vote in significant numbers. Dean's Internet-fed campaign has led the pack in fundraising and had buoyant poll numbers. But his support has come overwhelmingly from white voters in a race in which African American votes are essential for victory. In a recent nationwide poll taken by Zogby International, only 10 percent of likely black voters favored Dean.
If Dean's insurgent candidacy for the nomination is to succeed, Democratic strategists say, he will have to make inroads among black voters, who have been one of the party's most reliable constituencies. That will mean winning over skeptics such as Dameron and others who voiced similar feelings in interviews this week at Bert's.
"I'm sure he's trying to get ahead of the other candidates in the South," said Jim Felder, the African American president of the South Carolina Voter Education Project. "He knows he has to do well in South Carolina. He's trying to get our attention."
John Kenneth White, a professor of politics at Catholic University in Washington and a consultant to Zogby, agreed. Dean's advisers, he said, are "looking around and not seeing too many black faces. If Dean can make inroads in South Carolina, it seems to me that will broaden his coalition."
But Dean's deputy campaign manager, Andi Pringle, said the candidate was only speaking from the heart. "He was only making a point," Pringle said.
"He doesn't talk about race only among African Americans, as white candidates tend to do," she said. "White people tend to be a little nervous when talking about race and the history of race in this country. It happens to be a very passionate point for Howard Dean."
It proved to be a point with which his opponents took issue, too.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) fired off a statement on his chats with audiences about marching with Martin Luther King Jr. Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) released a statement about growing up in the segregated South, watching black people get shoved aside for jobs, education and health care.
Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio) appeared to be more upset than the rest. "We hit the roof when we heard that," said Jeff Cohen, Kucinich's campaign spokesman. "I think Dean's deluded. Representative Kucinich brings up racial issues that Dean hasn't even touched. He talks about the racially biased death penalty at campaign stop after campaign stop. He talks about the drug war and the racially unjust 'three strikes you're out' law.
"I don't think Dean goes near those issues," Cohen said.
Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political scientist, said Dean's statement would force the candidates to confront issues of race "rather than deliver feel-good lines to black voters."
Addressing those issues, Walters said, "is more than just kissing black babies, showing up at church and putting on shades to play the saxophone," as Bill Clinton did on "The Arsenio Hall Show" during the 1992 presidential race.
Recently , Dean's campaign offered African American newspapers an opinion piece in which he encouraged white Americans to discuss race but said little about what he would do as president to bridge racial gaps. He also started running an ad on African American-oriented radio stations in South Carolina -- and this week his rival Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) followed suit, running a spot that criticizes Dean for supporting the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 2000 decision to extend normal trade relations with China while he was governing Vermont.
No matter who does the talking, South Carolina voters are far less receptive to the Democratic candidates than those in Iowa and New Hampshire, White said.
In the other two states, two-thirds of likely Democratic voters said they were satisfied with the field of Democratic candidates, White said. But in South Carolina, only half liked the field, and "roughly a third wished others were running," he said.
Joe Darby, a popular black minister in Charleston, said Dean will surprise African Americans when he returns to the state to campaign for the primary.
"To his credit, he's far more knowledgeable of the black community than you would think for a governor from Vermont," Darby said. "He actually was one of the first candidates to pop up in church. We had a long chat when he was here, and he told me that his roommate in college was black. He told me that he felt like he was a part of the black student union because the brothers were always in his room."
But others aren't so sure -- about Dean or any other candidate. During his talk-radio program Wednesday, host Don Frierson said he got the impression that black voters didn't like any of the candidates.
"You know who a lot of people were talking about? Hillary Clinton," Frierson said of the U.S. senator from New York and former first lady. "That indicates to me that people aren't satisfied with what's out there right now."
African Americans represent about 30 percent of South Carolina's population of 4 million -- the third-highest percentage among states. They are twice as likely to be unemployed than white workers. The state has the third-highest percentage of black people who rank below the national averages in education and income. Black infants die at twice the rate of white infants, and black men are three times more likely to die from prostate cancer than white men.
On top of that, said Richard Shell, the owner of Bert's, he has to see the Confederate battle flag every time he drives past the statehouse on Main Street. The flag was placed in front of the building after the NAACP fought to have it removed from atop the capitol dome.
"I see a lot of bumper stickers that say, 'Off the dome and in your face,' " he said. "Personally, I think [Dean] is wasting his time talking to white people. A presidential candidate is not going to change their deep-rooted prejudices. You have to look at his record and see what he does regarding race, rather than just talk."
Political researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
washingtonpost.com |
