Black Voters

Whether the issue is gay marriage, Vegas-style gambling or college for illegal immigrants, all of Maryland's ballot campaigns have this in common: They are lavishing attention on black voters. African-Americans are expected to be fully a quarter of the Maryland electorate this year, a surge in participation attributed to robust support for President Barack Obama. Their sheer numbers make them important as Maryland, for the first time in decades, faces a trio of major ballot questions.

The two Baptist pastors didn't know a soul at Gov. Martin O'Malley's big breakfast for supporters of his same-sex marriage bill back in January. Neither had ever been in a room with so many openly gay people. "It was a different moment," said the Rev. Donte Hickman Sr., pastor of Southern Baptist Church in East Baltimore. He had attended the breakfast in Annapolis with a colleague, the Rev. Delman Coates, who leads a megachurch in Prince George's County. They listened. Observed.

He is airing campaign advertisements on minority-owned radio stations. He has enlisted the support of leaders in the African-American strongholds of Baltimore and Prince George's County. He will host a visit by President Barack Obama at historically black Bowie State University on Thursday. Less than a month before Election Day, Gov. Martin O'Malley is stepping up his courtship of the state's African-American community — a constituency with which the Democrat has had a complicated relationship, but which could decide the outcome of his race against Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. A pair of recent polls, including one released Tuesday, show O'Malley beginning to break away in what had been a neck-and-neck race with Ehrlich.

As the Nov. 6 election nears, likely Maryland voters are evenly divided on whether to make same-sex marriage legal in the state after opposition has grown in recent weeks, according to a new opinion poll conducted for The Baltimore Sun. Meanwhile, most voters are against Gov. Martin O'Malley's plan to expand gambling in Maryland, the poll found. Voters oppose the measure 54 percent to 39 percent - figures that are virtually unchanged over the past month despite a multimillion-dollar barrage of television ads seeking to sway public opinion.

On one side there's Alveda King, the niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, saying marriage should not be redefined. On there other, President Barack Obama, the country's first black president, says he  gays should be allowed to wed. Both sides of Question 6 unholstered their heavy-hitters today in dueling radio commercials for the final stretch of their campaigns. Early voting starts Saturday. Political strategists believe that as many as one in four Marylanders going to the polls this year will be African-American, and each of the three ballot questions with organized campaigns are wooing black votes . With same-sex marriage, the state's black voters are shaping up to be swing voters that could turn the outcome one way or another.

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.

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

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.

On one side there's Alveda King, the niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, saying marriage should not be redefined. On there other, President Barack Obama, the country's first black president, says he  gays should be allowed to wed. Both sides of Question 6 unholstered their heavy-hitters today in dueling radio commercials for the final stretch of their campaigns. Early voting starts Saturday. Political strategists believe that as many as one in four Marylanders going to the polls this year will be African-American, and each of the three ballot questions with organized campaigns are wooing black votes . With same-sex marriage, the state's black voters are shaping up to be swing voters that could turn the outcome one way or another.

Whether the issue is gay marriage, Vegas-style gambling or college for illegal immigrants, all of Maryland's ballot campaigns have this in common: They are lavishing attention on black voters. African-Americans are expected to be fully a quarter of the Maryland electorate this year, a surge in participation attributed to robust support for President Barack Obama. Their sheer numbers make them important as Maryland, for the first time in decades, faces a trio of major ballot questions.

Five weeks before the election, a measure to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland has seen a surge of support and is now favored by likely voters, 49 percent to 39 percent, a new Baltimore Sun poll has found. But at this stage, most voters are opposed to the gambling expansion law, according to the poll. And the electorate is conflicted about a measure to give illegal immigrants more access to higher education, with similar percentages supporting the law and opposing it. The outcome of all three referendums will be decided by a Maryland electorate in which the majority Democrats are expected to turn out in large numbers to support President Barack Obama.

Lord help us, they're talking race again. "They" meaning Republicans and Democrats. Race is a critical, sensitive and sometimes painful issue with relevance to everything from environmental policy to education reform to criminal justice to media to health care. For a politician to address it requires political courage. That's why politicians do not address it. Usually. That changes during political season when a given pol calculates that breaking his customary silence might net some tactical advantage.

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...

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.

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.

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."

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?