Steele spoke on a night when several other Hispanic and black Republicans addressed delegates, although the party's efforts to reach out to blacks are more challenging this year because of the candidacy of Obama, whom Steele did not mention by name.
Polls show that about nine in 10 black voters are backing Obama. A study released last week by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on African-American issues, concluded that 36 of 2,380 convention delegates are black, or 1.5 percent, down from the record 6.7 percent in 2004. None are from Maryland, with a population that is 29 percent black. "John McCain is likely to receive a historically low share of the black vote," the report concluded.
Steele accompanied McCain to a July meeting of the Urban League in Orlando, but the report found that such efforts are unlikely to win the support of black voters.
