Colin Powell was not the only black person in the convention hall Monday night.
It’s just that it sometimes seemed that way.
If all the delegates were present, at least 52 other African-Americans were on hand. That’s 2.6 percent of the total delegation, down from 107, or 4.8 percent, in 1992.
The African-American Republican is not easy to find. Exit polls usually show that more than 90 percent of black voters support Democratic candidates. According to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, fewer than 80 of the 8,000 black elected officials in the country, and only 10 of 550 black state legislators, are elected as Republicans.
Things weren’t always this way. Not that long ago, in fact, before Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, most black voters were loyal to “the party of Lincoln,” when that phrase was commonly heard at Republican gatherings.
The notion has been heard less often in recent years, a situation likely to be reversed by Bob Dole’s selection of Jack Kemp as his running mate. Kemp rarely passes up a chance to evoke Lincoln, and even Martin Luther King Jr., in his political speeches.
Kemp’s commitment to the poor, to the cities and especially to blacks stems from his populist conservatism–he has called himself “a bleeding-heart conservative”–and from his years in professional football.
“Jack Kemp probably showered with more black folks than most Republicans have shaken hands with,” noted Robert Woodson, a black conservative who knows Kemp.
However accurate Woodson’s wisecrack may be, it does reflect part of the Republican problem when it comes to attracting African-American voters: Many Republican leaders have little personal contact with blacks. This especially has been true since the GOP made common cause with Southern segregationists starting in the 1960s.
But the black electorate is not a monolith, and in recent years black Republicans have been somewhat more successful than black Democrats in appealing to white voters. There are only two black Republicans in Congress, but both of them, Gary Franks of Connecticut and J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, represent overwhelmingly white districts.
Franks and Watts are conservatives, and their success has ignited a debate among Republicans about how best to attract black voters. Traditionally, black Republicans were moderates, such as former Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. Along with their white allies, these black Republicans always thought their party should aggressively court African-American voters.
One of those white allies was former Sen. Bill Brock of Tennessee, who as GOP national chairman in 1980 vigorously pursed an “outreach” effort to black voters, and who still advocates such a policy. “The Republican Party can’t just be the party of open doors,” Brock said. “Nobody is walking in.”
But Ward Connerly, an African-American member of the University of California Board of Regents, said the party would be doing a disservice to itself and to blacks if it made a special effort to reach out to them.
Connerly, one of the leaders of the effort to outlaw affirmative action programs in California, said: “Society is dividing more and more along racial lines. I think the ultimate objective is a society where everyone gets equal treatment and no one gets a preference.”
Instead of reaching out to blacks as a group, Connerly said, Republicans should be faithful to their devotion to “individual merit.” He said that “being seen as part of a (minority) group is antithetical to Republicans.”
But David Bositis, a senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington think tank, argued that Republican rules put blacks at a disadvantage.
One reason there are fewer black delegates this year, Bositis said, is a party rule that awards more delegates to states carried by the last GOP presidential candidate. With some exceptions, these tend to be states where few blacks live, leaving relatively fewer slots in states where blacks could be chosen as delegates.
The Joint Center’s surveys reveal both the problems and the potential for Republican efforts to court black voters.
The problem is that only a few blacks, 8.7 percent, identify themseves as Republicans.
The potential is that surveys show that most black voters tend to hold very conservative views on some issues. Large majorities favor school prayer, a $500-per-child tax credit and strong penalties to repeat criminal offenders. In all, 60 percent of African-Americans described themselves as either conservative or moderate.
Watts, a former University of Oklahoma football star who was elected to Congress in the GOP sweep of 1994, said black voters are ignored by Republicans and taken for granted by Democrats.
“You have the black community out there in the political twilight zone,” he said. “The black community should say that whatever party comes into the community–make them accountable.”
