Dean's New Challenge: Reaching Out to Black Voters
By JODI WILGOREN
Published: November 24, 2003
ynthia Williams showed up nearly an hour before Howard Dean's scheduled appearance at Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem yesterday morning, eager to disappear among the women in feathered hats who filled the pews. For once, the only thing making Ms. Williams, an African-American computer technician from Nutley, N.J., stand out was the blue Dean button on her lapel.
"So many events that I go to I'm like one of maybe two black faces," said Ms. Williams, 37, a staunch Dean fan who has followed her candidate to more than a dozen events in New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire over the last year. "The only thing I can say the reason why is there hasn't been any effort to reach out to minorities."
Ms. Williams's experience points to a problem that has been looming over Dr. Dean's presidential campaign throughout his surge to the front of the field this summer and fall. How can Dr. Dean, the former governor of a nearly all-white, mostly rural state, speak to urban issues and motivate the minority voters who have been a mainstay of the Democratic electorate for decades?
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