Black Voters

Among those washed away by the Democratic tide on Tuesday were some African-American Republicans who were put forward by national party bigwigs as the new, changing face of the GOP. The most prominent - Michael S. Steele, who ran for the U.S. Senate from Maryland, and J. Kenneth Blackwell and Lynn Swann, gubernatorial candidates from Ohio and Pennsylvania, respectively - offer lessons in defeat to which Republicans should pay careful attention. There's nothing wrong with trying to remind black voters, one of the Democrats' most loyal groups, that they should not be taken for granted.

Political consultant Julius Henson returned to the witness stand Monday and placed blame for a controversial Election Day 2010 robocall on a top campaign aide to former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. Henson told jurors in Baltimore Circuit Court that he was eating with his granddaughter at a Baltimore McDonald's at 4:42 p.m. Election Day when Ehrlich campaign manager Paul Schurick called him and authorized Henson to arrange the call — which prosecutors...

The Maryland Republican Party opened a bid for support among black voters yesterday by announcing formation of an African American Steering Committee."

There's no disputing that Republicans are surly these days. With the exception of South Carolina, turnout among GOP voters has been tepid. Hordes of commentators, me included, have argued at length that this apathetic grumpiness reflects a deep dissatisfaction with the Republican field. Worse, many Republicans recognize that their cantankerousness over their choices makes things worse. It's a vicious cycle. As George Orwell once wrote: "A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

TIMING IS everything in politics, they say. And at first blush, Rep. Elijah Cummings' timing doesn't look so good. The Baltimore Democrat is taking over as chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus at a time when African-American lawmakers are pretty far out of the power center in Washington. Republicans run the show now, not only at the White House but in both houses of Congress. The 39 CBC members are all Democrats, and thus function as a faction of a shrinking opposition party. They also serve exclusively in the House, where the rules allow a disciplined Republican majority to ignore them with impunity.

FOR YEARS, many African-Americans, tired of being ignored by Republicans and taken for granted by Democrats, have been crying in the wilderness. Democrats are hearing their cries, but Republicans seem to be responding to them. While no one foresees a great exodus of black voters to the Republican Party, a growing number of them are regarding Republicans favorably because of the GOP's ability to claim and define issues that matter to them as individuals, such as jobs, taxes, business and values.

QUESTIONS HAVE BEEN expressed during this political season about whether black voters need to re-examine their strong support for Democratic platforms and candidates in favor of Republican policies that might now have new relevance for blacks. To say today that the poor must help themselves not by demanding a seat at a lunch counter but by owning that lunch counter and, by inference, that Republican domestic policies would further that aim, requires blacks to overlook decades of history in this country.

PHILADELPHIA -- When President Clinton came here for a speech last month, it was lost on no one in politics that Rep. Chaka Fattah, a popular African-American Democrat who represents a black-majority district here, was chosen to introduce him.The message is clear that the White House is relying heavily on a high turnout among African-American voters alarmed by what they see as the hostility of the Republicans who have controlled Congress in the last two...

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke built his victory in the Democratic mayoral primary last Thursday on a bedrock of strength in Baltimore's black voting precincts, easily offsetting an apparent ambivalence toward him among white voters.Having wielded the decision-making and patronage powers of mayor for four years, Mr. Schmoke consolidated his standing in the city's black neighborhoods. But that same leverage served him less well among whites -- who gave him no more support overall than he received as an untested candidate four years ago.According to a computer analysis of the unofficial election returns by The Sun, Mr. Schmoke won a majority of the white votes in only one of six councilmanic districts, Northwest Baltimore's 5th. He was the first choice of voters in white precincts of the center-city 2nd District, but his 46 percent tally there was less than a majority.

WASHINGTON -- As President Clinton struggles to keep his presidency afloat, black voters suddenly find themselves holding important life jacket.Simply put, it works like this:One, Republicans need to get Democratic votes to win impeachment. A two-thirds majority is needed for impeachment and the appearance of bipartisanship is crucial to avoid the appearance that Republicans are merely trying to overturn a legitimate election that they lost.Two, Mr. Clinton is unlikely to step down on his own unless leaders of his own party tell him it is time.

Saying the offenses strike at the "values of this nation," a judge sentenced Paul E. Schurick, the campaign manager of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., to home detention and community service Thursday for approving automated Election Day telephone calls to keep black voters from the polls. The sentencing went forward even as Schurick's attorneys sought a new trial, alleging that the credibility of a key prosecution witness has been undermined. Baltimore Circuit Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill spared Schurick prison time by suspending a one-year sentence and forgoing fines.

Can we just say, without any hedging about how it was a stupid idea or protected political speech, that launching the "relax" robocalls to suppress black voters in the 2010 gubernatorial election was as deeply cynical a scheme as we've heard? Can we agree that it was jarring in its blatant disregard for the decades-long effort to extend the rights of all citizens to participate in this democracy? Can we just say, without being too precious about it, that it's appalling that anyone would even think of doing this in 21st-century America?

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Sen. Barack Obama said, "There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there is the United States of America. " Those were welcome and commendable words. Unfortunately, they appear to be only words. Since then, President Obama has divided us along race and class lines more than any modern president. Some of his strongest, high-profile supporters in the black community are now saying that President Obama's race, alone, should be enough for black voters to vote for his re-election.

Two disparate groups suggested Friday that Maryland's proposed congressional map might illegally dilute the power of minority voters, though national experts warned that any potential lawsuit would face a high hurdle in federal court. A Prince George's County political action committee and a national watchdog group contend that the proposed districts do not adequately represent the state's black and Hispanic populations. The accusations came a day after Western Maryland Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett expressed similar concerns.

Regarding the recent indictment of senior Bob Ehrlich aide Paul Schurick and political hired gun Julius Henson over last year's political robocall scandal, some believe prosecutors should have dropped the matter. The campaign is over, they argue. Pursuing the operatives of a vanquished opponent smacks of sore winner syndrome. While I understand these frustrations, I believe that the robocall stunt warrants appropriate scrutiny, and consequences, for four reasons. •It was hypocritical.

I don't know where Harry Calloway is these days. But five summers ago, when I first met him, Harry was a recovering heroin user/dealer trying to do the right thing. He'd pulled out of the drug scene that had nearly cost him his life — he'd survived nine bullets to the face and body as he walked out of a late-night club in 1998 — and he had enrolled in a culinary training class by day and college courses by night. Then came ArrestFest, and Harry ended up back in jail.

PHILADELPHIA -- A crowd had gathered for a get-out-the-vote rally in the heart of this Democratic city. But even as fiery words tumbled from his lips, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson saw that his audience was less than pumped up."This may be the most critical election since 1964," Mr. Jackson thundered to the mostly black throng outside City Hall. "In 1964, we had George Wallace and Bull Connor insulting us, humiliating us, making us fight back. . . . Before, you were fired up. But today, there is a kind of coolness."

Black voters in Maryland gave a decided edge to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton over former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas yesterday.But for many African-Americans, there was little enthusiasm for this presidential race. Some said the five Democratic candidates were not addressing the black constituency.In the end, Mr. Clinton managed to emerge from the pack to capture as much as 56 percent of Maryland's black vote, according to one exit poll."Clinton's people did a good job," said Rep. Kweisi Mfume, D-7th.

This time last year, virtually no one could have predicted that today both of the nation's two major political parties would be headed by African-Americans. Democrat Barack Obama's historic election as the first black president and Michael S. Steele's elevation to chairman of the Republican National Committee mark a watershed in race relations in this country that is literally unprecedented. Yet neither man could have hoped to achieve his present position without the political empowerment of African-Americans made possible by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed blacks across the South access to the ballot.

The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama By Gwen Ifill Doubleday / 288 pages / $25.95 It's too bad Republicans backing their candidate in the recent presidential election chose to demean Gwen Ifill's The Breakthrough in hopes of disqualifying the venerable black journalist as the moderator of the vice presidential debate. Now that it's published, they should read the book. Ifill, a former reporter for Baltimore's Evening Sun and now the moderator and managing editor of PBS' Washington Week and a senior correspondent of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, explores the landscape of black politics.