Nine Democrats take stage, with black vote up for grabs
Focus to be on issues key to loyal constituency tonight at Morgan State
By Paul West
Sun National Staff
September 9, 2003
Nine Democrats will have everything to gain when they take the stage in Baltimore tonight for a presidential debate tailored to appeal to African-Americans, their party's most loyal constituency.
This time, the black vote is up for grabs in the nomination contest, more so than in any recent campaign.
When former Vice President Al Gore, who carried the African-American vote by lopsided margins in the 2000 primaries, decided against running next year, Democrats were left without a major contender who has a strong historical connection to the black community. No one has filled that void.
"I think it is both wide open and closed," said Rep. Chaka Fattah, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the sponsor of tonight's debate.
Fattah predicted that African-Americans had decided against supporting President Bush's re-election and would vote "in enormous numbers" for whomever the Democrats put up.
As for the nomination race, "three, four or five of these candidates could plausibly enjoy significant support in the African-American community, depending on the positions they articulate," the Philadelphia Democrat said.
At the moment, however, the major contenders are as unknown to blacks as they are to the rest of the country.
"Most people, black and white, don't know very much about any of them," said Rep. Albert R. Wynn of Prince George's County, who has endorsed Sen. John Edwards. "There hasn't been much campaigning in communities with large African-American constituencies. That's about to change."
Early front-runner Howard Dean has spent his career in a virtually all-white state, Vermont, with fewer than 1,000 black voters. Sen. John Kerry doesn't have the emotional ties to African-American voters that his Massachusetts colleague, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, does.
Rep. Richard A. Gephardt developed ties to the nation's elected black officials as House Democratic leader but has always represented a largely white St. Louis district.
Edwards had to cultivate black voters in his only previous campaign; but outside his home state of North Carolina, he is known mainly among his fellow trial lawyers.
Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, who was persuaded by fellow students to travel to Mississippi for a black voter registration project during the early 1960s, began to be introduced to the African-American electorate only in the last presidential race.
"This is a different year," said Natalie Davis, a political scientist at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama. "We don't have a well-known candidate that black voters can glom onto. We don't have a Bill Clinton. We don't have a Jimmy Carter. There's no one with a natural fit right now, but there could be as the campaign goes along."
Among the minor candidates are former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and the Rev. Al Sharpton - making this the first time that more than one African-American has sought a major-party nomination. Neither, however, is regarded as a serious threat to win primaries or caucuses (something Jesse Jackson did in 1988) or a place on the national ticket.
Because the first states to hold delegate contests next winter, Iowa and New Hampshire, have few black voters, the field of candidates might be effectively reduced before the campaign heads South and large number of blacks get to vote.
Blacks make up as much as 40 percent of the primary electorate in Deep South states from South Carolina to Louisiana, and even more in selected congressional districts, the basis for awarding convention delegates.
In the Feb. 3 primary in South Carolina, the first contest with a large African-American vote, blacks are expected to cast two of every five ballots statewide. No candidate has opened up a big lead in the state.
Dean, whose campaign events attract predominantly white crowds, recently began airing commercials on black radio stations in South Carolina. Edwards' campaign claims to have the most endorsements from black officials in the state. Gephardt is on track to gain the support of Rep. James E. Clyburn, the first black to represent South Carolina in Congress since the 1800s, whom some see as a kingmaker in the primary.
Unlike past nomination campaigns, when blacks in the South played an influential role, the race might effectively be over before most Southerners get to vote. After South Carolina, only Virginia and Tennessee hold contests before March 2, the date that many politicians believe the race will be decided. The South "may be overshadowed" in the selection of a nominee, said Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta.
It also isn't clear that most of the South will be a major battleground in the general election next year. With virtually all Southern states, other than Florida, favored to go to Bush, "the black vote may be more important in states like Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania," he added.
Tonight's event at Morgan State University, billed as the first presidential debate ever held on the campus of a historically black college, will be the first meeting of all nine Democratic contenders since the fall series of debates began last week.
It will feature questions from a panel of black journalists, who are restricted by the ground rules from asking about topics other than foreign policy or the Black Caucus policy agenda (jobs, health care, education, civil rights and homeland security). The questioners are Ed Gordon of Black Entertainment Television; online commentator Farai Chideya; and Juan Williams of National Public Radio.
Brit Hume of Fox News will moderate the debate, to be held at the university's Gilliam Concert Hall in the Murphy Fine Arts Center. It will be carried live on the Fox News cable channel from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
The event is the second nationally televised Democratic forum in less than a week. Last Thursday, all the candidates except Sharpton met in Albuquerque, N.M., for the first of six debates sanctioned by the national Democratic Party.
Tonight's isn't part of that series, but another Black Caucus-sponsored debate, next month in Detroit, will be.
In the New Mexico debate, sponsored by members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, several candidates recited lines in fractured Spanish. No similar linguistic appeals are expected this evening, according to one of the participants.
"'Yo, yo, homeboy?'" mused Braun. "I don't think so."
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