CAN THE GOP CONVINCE BLACKS NOT TO VOTE?
Soft Sell
by John B. Judis
Post date: 10.31.02
Issue date: 11.11.02
"We've never seen in our lifetime an effort to attract the black vote by Republicans like we're seeing now," Former Kansas City Mayor Emanuel Cleaver told The Kansas City Star last month. In Missouri, Republican Senate candidate Jim Talent is making the rounds of black business groups, while black radio stations are inundated by Republican ads calling on blacks to "break the habit" of voting Democratic. In Arkansas, Republican ads are running on black radio as well. Speaking in August at a barbecue organized by the Jefferson County Minority Business Owners Association, Republican Senator Tim Hutchinson confessed, "When I read the history of the civil rights movement, our party wasn't doing what we should have been doing. I ask for your forgiveness."
The Republicans' new approach certainly seems like a welcome change from the days when conservatives like Jesse Helms spurned black voters and their causes in order to curry favor with working-class whites. By identifying Republicans as the "white party," they helped to revive Republican fortunes in the Deep South and in border states. But they also increased racial polarization and even hatred. Now, with electoral support waning for overt political racism, it seems the Republicans have at last bid goodbye to that sordid legacy.
Except they haven't really. For the most part, Republicans this election cycle aren't trying to woo black voters by offering their own solutions to issues such as poverty or civil rights. Rather, they're trying to convince them not to vote at all by sowing cynicism about white Democrats, even implying they are racist. This "depress the vote" strategy becomes even clearer when viewed in conjunction with the GOP's ongoing efforts to subtly intimidate black voters with dubious charges of election fraud. When it comes to race, the GOP hasn't changed nearly as much as it would have you believe.
The best place to see the new Republican strategy in action is in Missouri. In the 1980s, Missouri Republicans saw their party displace the Democrats as the dominant party. By 1988, Republicans held both Senate seats and every major state office except lieutenant governor. But in the 1990s, Democrats began to chip away at the GOP's advantage as some Reagan Democrats, disillusioned with Republican economics, returned to the fold and as upscale suburbanites became uncomfortable with the Republicans' reputation for intolerance. While Bush carried the state narrowly in 2000, Republican Senator John Ashcroft was defeated by the late Mel Carnahan, and Talent lost the governorship by 21,000 votes to Democrat Bob Holden.
One key to the Democrats' success was the overwhelming support of black voters, who make up 51 percent of St. Louis, 19 percent of surrounding St. Louis County, and 32 percent of Kansas City. Carnahan and Holden piled up big enough margins in these areas to offset GOP advantages in the rest of the state. To win state office, Republicans realized they had to loosen black voters' commitment to the Democrats without eroding Republican support among the rural and small-town white voters who had migrated to the GOP.
To accomplish that, Talent has played politics with mirrors. Talent has downplayed his own deeply held conservative convictions on such subjects as privatizing Social Security, eliminating welfare for single mothers, and abolishing the Department of Education. Instead, he has trumpeted his support for urban redevelopment through tax cuts, and he has brought in black Republicans--Secretary of Education Rod Paige and retiring Representative J.C. Watts--to campaign for him while saying little that could disturb or engage black voters. The idea is not so much to win votes but to deprive the opposition of a bogeyman against whom they can turn out the vote.
And while Talent and Missouri Republicans have been trying to persuade black voters that they are not such bad fellows, they've made a ferocious effort to persuade them that the Democrats are. In one radio ad aired on black stations, a grandmother warns her school-age granddaughter, "Baby, there are some real ugly Democrats that have hurt black people and not helped us at all. We have to be smart and make decisions based on what is really right. Not just 'cause somebody told us we owe them our vote." In another ad, aired repeatedly on St. Louis stations, an announcer lists a series of indignities that white Democrats have visited upon blacks:
Did you know that it was a Democratic county executive and prosecutor that said it was OK to shoot down two unarmed black suspects? ... Did you know that under the leadership of Democratic Mayor Francis Slay, the most prominent black ward in the city of St. Louis was eliminated? Did you know that to secure his chances of being reelected, Congressman Dick Gephardt took black voters away from Congressman Lacy Clay? ... Break the habit. Think the vote.
The ad isn't just ugly; it's dishonest. It refers to a decision by state and federal authorities not to prosecute two detectives who shot and killed two men whom they were trying to arrest on drug charges. It doesn't mention that the decision was made by local Democratic officials and the Bush administration Justice Department. The ad also misrepresents the redistricting fights in greater St. Louis, failing to note that they pitted black officeholders against one another as well as against white officeholders and that the fights were finally resolved to the satisfaction of everyone except for a single maverick alderwoman. In fact, Gephardt, while giving himself a more Democratic constituency, took no significant votes from Clay. As a result, both men face only nominal opponents this November.
Such ads don't suggest what Republicans would do if they replaced Democrats in office. Instead, they try to sow doubt among blacks about the sincerity and goodwill of white Democrats. Their primary purpose is not to win support for Republicans but to lose it for Democrats. As an anonymous leaflet placed on the cars of NAACP members at an October 4 meeting in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, put it, "Send Mark Pryor a strong message by casting your vote for Senator Tim Hutchinson or just not voting in that particular race [emphasis added]." Says St. Louis University political scientist Ken Warren, "The whole idea is to alienate blacks from their Democratic base so that they don't turn out and vote."
And as the leaflet suggests, it's not just Missouri: GOP Groups are running similar ad campaigns in other states and districts where black voters could determine close contests. The Kansas-based Council for a Better Government is spending $1.5 million to produce and air radio commercials in Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, and North Dakota. The ads are supposed to air 21,000 times by November 5. Like the Missouri Republican Party ads, they insinuate that blacks are being manipulated by evil white Democrats. One ad about vouchers says, "I got one question for these white Democrats. What's wrong with black parents choosing schools for black children? Do you have a problem with that?" Another suggests that black soldiers were singled out for mistreatment during the Clinton years. "Under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton and Al Gore," the narrator says, "African American soldiers helped keep the peace in five continents, but their readiness declined through neglect, and their morale declined through disrespect."
GOPAC, the organization made famous by Newt Gingrich and currently chaired by Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, has launched its own ad campaign directed at minority voters. Its first radio ads aired in Missouri and in the neighboring Kansas congressional district where conservative Republican Adam Taff is challenging incumbent Democrat Dennis Moore. One ad about Social Security accused white Democrats of using the system to take money away from black Americans. "You've heard about reparations. You know, where whites compensate blacks for enslaving us?" the ad began. "Well, guess what we've got now? Reverse reparations. Under Social Security today, blacks receive twenty-one thousand dollars less in retirement benefits than whites of similar income and marital status. ... One-third of the brothers die before retirement and receive nothing. ... So the next time some Democrat says he won't touch Social Security, ask why he thinks blacks owe reparations to whites."
According to The Kansas City Star, Talent paid for the ad's time slot, but it provoked such an outcry that his campaign repudiated it and GOPAC disowned it, blaming it on the media group that produced it. The ad is a gross distortion: Black Americans actually get a better rate of return on Social Security than whites and do considerably better on disability and survivor benefits. But more noteworthy than the ads' distortions is their explicit effort to inflame blacks against whites. We've seen this kind of twisted racial appeal before from black nationalists like Louis Farrakhan (and, at their worst, from Democrats) but not from white Republicans.
he second prong of this year's GOP efforts to suppress the minority vote has been widespread allegations of voter fraud in minority communities. Such efforts go back decades. In 1986, the Republican National Committee (RNC) devised a "ballot security program" that was used in Louisiana, Indiana, and Missouri. It was designed, in the words of an RNC memo, to "keep the black vote down considerably."
This year GOP officials in Missouri have accused Clay, the state's most prominent black Democrat, and other St. Louis Democrats of stealing the 2000 Senate and gubernatorial elections. Republicans point to the Democrats' success in convincing Circuit Judge Evelyn Baker to keep the polls open past 7 p.m. on Election Day to accommodate those still standing outside St. Louis polling places waiting to vote. The polling places had been clogged by disputes over the qualifications of voters who had been unaccountably removed from the registration lists. An appeals court panel subsequently overturned Baker's order, but Missouri Republican Senator Christopher Bond declared two days later that the "evidence points to a major criminal enterprise" by the Democrats. Bond rejected the idea that any voters had been prevented from voting. "Can you believe that anybody would say that a Democratic election board, appointed by a Democratic governor in a Democratic city dominated by Democrats, was trying to keep Democrats from voting?" he asked. Since then, according to St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Jo Mannies, Missouri Republicans have "savaged" Clay's reputation over the fraud allegations.
St. Louis has had instances of voter fraud before, and what exactly happened on Election Night remains shrouded in controversy. What has been established, however, doesn't point to a Democratic conspiracy. Baker was a Republican appointee, and the Democrats on the city's election board protested her decision to keep the polls open. "I think Sen. Bond needs to get a grip," Baker told the Riverfront Times after hearing his charges. Meanwhile, Clay's central contention--that several hundred registered voters were being prevented from voting by faulty lists--has been borne out. This August the Bush Justice Department agreed with Clay and the Democrats that "the Board of Elections improperly removed voters from the registration rolls by placing voters on inactive status without notice and then failing to maintain procedures on Election Day adequate to ensure that those voters could reactivate their registration status and vote without undue delay."
The Justice Department decision quieted discussion of the 2000 election, but Missouri Republicans have now begun to raise the specter of voter fraud in the coming election. They even attempted to create another logjam at the St. Louis polls in November. While a new Missouri law says that voters whose eligibility cannot "immediately" be established should be able to cast provisional ballots subject to later verification, Missouri Republican Secretary of State Matt Blunt announced in October that if voters' names were not on the rolls, election judges would have to attempt to verify their registrations before they could cast provisional ballots. That was exactly what had caused the long lines in 2000. Facing a suit from Missouri Democrats, Blunt compromised, but Bond has continued to warn of imminent fraud. Last week he declared, "I get that funny smell sometimes around election time in St. Louis, and ... I'm getting a whiff of that smell."
Republicans outside Missouri have also been using allegations of fraud to intimidate potential minority voters. In Arkansas, where there are hotly contested Senate, gubernatorial, and House races, Republicans have already begun charging fraud. In Jefferson County--which is 40 percent black and in the middle of Democrat Mike Ross's district--a group of predominately black voters, who went to the county courthouse to cast their early ballots on October 21, were confronted by Republican poll watchers (including, reportedly, two Hutchinson staffers) who photographed them and demanded that they show identification--even though Arkansas law stipulates that poll watchers cannot ask voters to show identification. According to a witness cited by the Pine Bluff Commercial, several voters became frustrated and left. When Arkansas Democrats complained, Arkansas Republican Party Chairman Marty Ryall upped the ante, suggesting that Democrats were engaged in a "nationwide effort to steal elections and steal the Senate."
Likewise, in Georgia, Republican officials have announced a "fair elections task force" to monitor the polls in November. In South Dakota, Republican officials, citing several instances of forged registrations from Native Americans, have called on Attorney General Ashcroft to send federal election monitors to the state. And in Hidalgo County, Texas, Republicans are already crying fraud. In that county, heavily populated by Hispanics, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez has been actively registering voters. In the first three days of early voting, 4,969 people cast ballots compared to 1,705 in the last gubernatorial election. On October 23, Hidalgo County Republican Party Chairman Hollis Rutledge warned that the election system was "primed for fraud" and claimed that an organization called VoterViews found 16,000 dead or unqualified people on the Hidalgo voter rolls. Texas's Republican Secretary of State Gwyn Shea, however, said she had never heard of VoterViews and had not seen their report. (VoterViews is located at the Austin address of a precinct chairman of the Travis County Republican Party. I sent him an e-mail requesting a copy of the study but did not hear back from him.)
To be sure, voter fraud still exists in poor areas. But as the 2000 election showed, ensuring the right to vote is a much greater problem, particularly among low-income minorities in places like Jacksonville, Florida--where in November 2000, nearly 5,000 ballots in predominately African American communities were tossed out because of a flawed ballot. David Bositis, an expert in voting rights with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, sees the Republicans' strategy this year as simply a continuation of the Reagan-era efforts to hold down the minority vote. "Their agenda has always been to make voting more difficult, because they realize the higher the turnout, the more likely the turnout won't be their kind of guys."
In short, it's not yet time to celebrate the end of Republican racial politics. Conservative Republicans may be paying more attention to black voters than in the past--and they may be smiling as they speak--but when this mask of warm-hearted concern is drawn aside, the GOP's strategy is still aimed less at creating diverse black political participation than at trying to persuade black Americans to participate as little as possible. Let's hope it fails.
thenewrepublic.com |
