”Ask the black bus driver. Ask the black teacher. Ask the mother on welfare, she knows better than anyone. Drive by Cabrini-Green. Drive down South State Street. Drive out to the West Side. Thirty years of welfare haven`t done the trick,” says Jay Walker, a former assistant corporation counsel for the city and now an administrative law judge for the state who is running as a Republican against U.S. Rep. Charles Hayes for Congress next spring.
”So, after 30 years, Republicans are saying: `Let`s try something else. We`ve given the Great Society 30 years, and it isn`t working. Let`s revamp it.` I agree. In my campaign, I`m meeting much less resistance to the idea of voting Republican than I might have a couple of years ago.
”It used to be you`d have long emotional debates, or you`d be left alone with no one who`d talk to you. People are more open to the Republican Party than they were a decade ago, not because the Republican Party has been so gracious and provided for African American participation but because African Americans are learning you can`t depend on the federal government.
”The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans place their confidence in economic independence and the Democrats place it on economic dependence. That`s the fundamental difference. Economic independence gives you social mobility, and that is what my community needs. There are those who want the federal government to help us, to solve everything.
”Well, it can`t, and it won`t. There are those who think the federal government owes us. Unfortunately, we are the only ethnic group that consistently makes that argument. I don`t see the Asians coming to America, getting off the plane, running to the government and saying, `OK, it`s up to you to bail us out.`
”Dependency has put a damper on initiative. I want to see the money being spent on welfare used instead to encourage black business, self-sufficiency, accountability-all those qualities we so respected and that got us through the Jim Crow days and the Depression. We can do it again, but we`ve got to do it ourselves.”
Walker`s views are not unusual among other blacks of his age or background. Indeed, it is young, educated blacks who are showing a tendency to turn to the Republican Party as a political alternative.
According to a recent survey done by the Republican National Committee, only 12 percent of the nation`s black voters identify themselves as Republicans. But among black men ages 18 to 34 with a high school education, the number jumps to 25 percent, and among black men ages 18 to 34 with a college education, 22 percent call themselves Republicans.
The numbers fall off significantly among black men 50 and older. Only 6 percent of the high school-educated and 5 percent of the college-educated among them call themselves Republicans.
The number of younger, better-educated, middle-class blacks has increased dramatically in America over the last several decades. From 1950 to 1990, the number of black Americans doubled, but blacks holding white-collar jobs increased by 920 percent.
”In the last 10 years there has been a tremendous flowering of the black middle class,” says Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a former Chicagoan who is now a California-based lecturer and author of ”The Mugging of Black America.”
”They have moved into the mainstream, and their next step is to translate personal success into political achievement. Now they are looking around. They are looking at the Democratic agenda, and what are they seeing?
”I`ll tell you what they are seeing-old-fashioned liberal principles that have failed. They are going to be searching for other approaches to solving crime and drugs and class division. It will be a renaissance they will go through, and it is exciting. They are starting to throw out the old baggage and bring in the new.”
Many young blacks will still attempt to do so within the Democratic Party, Hutchinson predicts. Others might be so alienated by both parties that they will drift into political isolation, ”neutral and neutralized.” And then there will be those who, he says, will risk being called `black politically incorrect` and join the Republican Party, where they believe there might be more room for them.
Besides that, the line to the GOP is shorter. So says John Marshall law professor David Neely, a former legal counsel for Operation PUSH, who has become increasingly disillusioned with the Democrats.
”I`ve been told to wait so many times by Democratic politicians in this city that there comes a point you get tired of hearing it. I`m now seriously looking at the Republican Party because the line is shorter. I think if the Republican Party would take the black vote seriously, they will help black individuals help themselves. The Republican Party needs to address the domestic and social issues with as much vigor as they do international issues. But it is not going to happen overnight.”
No doubt the line is shorter, but the question is whether the Republicans are even willing to let blacks line up at all. They may not need to. Nationally, they are winning elections without them, for blacks make up only 10 percent of the nation`s registered voters.
In the 1984 presidential election, 89 percent of the black vote nationally went to Walter Mondale. In 1988, 86 percent went to Democrat Michael Dukakis.
”Until very recently, there has been no difference between the way middle-class blacks and poor blacks vote,” says Paul Green, professor of political science at Governor`s State University. ”There are only two ethnic groups that didn`t traditionally vote their income-Jews and blacks. With almost every other ethnic group, the higher the income, the greater the chance that they vote Republican.”
Out of 26 black members of Congress today, only one-Gary Franks of Connecticut-is a Republican. And out of 438 black members of state
legislatures, only three are Republican. There are no black Republicans in the Illinois General Assembly, on the Cook County Board or in the Chicago City Council.
”In some ways the blacks are caught,” says Tom Roser, a conservative Republican, political commentator and onetime appointee in the Department of Commerce under Richard Nixon, whose administration for a while supported initiatives of ”black capitalism.”
”The Republican Party has failed to encourage the upbuilding of the black middle class, where Republicans usually are, and the Democratic Party has become arrogant in taking black votes for granted,” Roser continues. The Republicans have been guilty of a lot of things: not being concerned with black issues and not bringing blacks into their fold. But that may well be starting to change.”
”Blacks haven`t chosen the Republican Party because it has not marketed itself,” says Al Robinson, a black Republican businessman. ”Blacks are basically conservative. They are pro-life, for instance. But the Republicans haven`t picked up on that until recently. And in Chicago, they have no patronage. They can`t give you something for your vote. In dealing with a minority, the question is always: `What`s in it for me? Can I get a job?”`
”Well, when you vote 3 percent Republican, you can`t go in there and say, `Give us something,”` says Hurley Green, editor of the Chicago Independent Bulletin, a black newspaper that serves the eastern half of the South Side. ”At the same time, realistically and on the local level, Republicans can`t do anything to help. They can`t offer a job, they can`t fix a ticket. In addition, they haven`t offered much.”
Green points out that Gov. Edgar actively pursued the black vote on the South and West Sides and spent ”hundreds of thousands of dollars down here.” Edgar won, but the rewards-political appointments-did not go to known black Republicans but mostly to black independents or Democrats who switched allegiances to support him. Among them were Nancy Jefferson (named to the Illinois Human Rights Commission), Nikki Zollar (to director of the Department of Professional Regulation) and Desiree Rogers (to director of the Illinois State Lottery).
In the black community, such appointees are called ”butterflies,”
”rent-me`s” and ”half-steps” because although they are black, they aren`t the REAL black Republicans, according to black Republican stalwarts.
”This might fool the white man, but it doesn`t fool us. It helped Edgar get elected, but it does nothing to build the numbers of black Republicans in this city,” says one black Republican. ”People are laughing. We are the underdogs knocking on doors trying to get black Democrats to vote Republican, and then when a Republican wins, the spoils go to black independents or even those, like Nancy Jefferson, who vow they are still Democrats. People see this. They see it doesn`t pay to be a black Republican. Now you wonder why there aren`t more of us?”
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”Blacks are gagging on the donkey but not yet ready to swallow the elephant.”
That oft-quoted saying is as valid today as it was 12 years ago when former Republican state legislator Charles Gaines from Chicago first said it. Gaines, 67, is a lifelong Republican who describes his tenure in the Illinois General Assembly from 1975 to 1981 as the time when ”I was the only Republican who was not white and the only black who was not a Democrat.”
He also likes to say, ”If white Republicans were as wise as they were smart, they would make headway in the black community.” To explain, he says: ”For 20 years blacks have been chafing at the bit. They won the prize with the election of Harold Washington for mayor, and then they lost it. They are searching now.
”There is movement, a slight movement in the black community,” he adds, but the Cook County Republicans aren`t picking up on it. ”The first step is not voting at all. That is happening-a `plague-on-both-your-houses` approach. They feel the Democrats are not rewarding them in proportion to their vote, and they back away from the thought of being Republican.
”White Republicans have no personal connections with blacks. Locally and nationally, they are the same white suburbanites from all over. They know nothing about the black community, and the black community knows nothing about them. If blacks are to become Republicans, they will do it for their own reasons, which the white Republicans don`t understand.
”A poor black will say, `The Republicans are for the rich, the Democrats are for the poor.` And I`ll say, `Right, and as long as you stay Democrat, you`ll stay poor.` ”
Gaines, whose father, Harris B. Gaines, also served as a Republican in the Illinois General Assembly from 1929 to 1936, has been a consummate Republican politician all his life.
”Harold Washington was running up and down the street organizing the Democrats, and I was running up and down the street organizing the
Republicans, and then we`d both end up at the Avenue Lounge to talk,” he says. ”That was in the `40s.”
There was less of a social stigma then in being a black Republican. Ringing a doorbell and saying you were a Republican precinct captain did not make people shut the door and turn off their lights. ”You did not get accused of holding a Republican meeting in a phone booth,” Gaines says, with good humor in his voice.
But two things are happening within the black community these days, Gaines notes, that have never happened before, and the Republican Party could benefit if it perked up its ears and opened its eyes and pocketbooks.
”You have a larger group than ever of blacks becoming middle class and a larger group than ever staying poor. They may be developing different concerns, but they still vote the same way because they are cousins. Republicans don`t make an effort to win the black middle-class vote.
As a result, Gaines says, black empowerment suffers. He has a saying for that too: ”If you don`t have a voice in both parties, you have no voice at all.”
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Jacoby Crutcher, the young man who brought pause to the 2nd Precinct of the 6th Ward 10 years ago by declaring himself Republican, is now the youngest Republican committeeman in the State of Illinois. Whenever he votes Republican in the basement of St. Mark`s, no one now finds it surprising or unusual. There are now some 30 others like him. That`s not a huge trend yet, Crutcher admits, but definitely a sign of change.
Foster, the black Republican committeeman of 30 years on the West Side, also sees something new. ”You know how you can tell if a guy is splitting his vote?” he asks. ”By his feet. If his hand is going back and forth from Democrat to Republican on his ballot, so do his feet. I`ve been seeing that more.”
Again, no significant trend but certainly another sign of change.
