http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art...EWS01/309280025 Last Updated: 4:51 pm | Friday, September 28, 2007
Ire over GOP snubsThe four leading Republican candidates for president can probably get away with snubbing a minority issues debate in Baltimore as they did this week, since the quest for the GOP nomination is likely to be decided in state like New Hampshire and Iowa, where black Republicans are few and far between.
But one of the four – Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson – is likely going to win that nomination. And when they get to key states like Ohio in the general election, they may find that is it minority voters, blacks and Latinos, who are doing the snubbing.“They are being foolish,’’ Christopher Smitherman, president of the Cincinnati branch of the NAACP, said of the GOP no-shows. “It’s a serious mistake not to reach out to everyone. How can African-American judge them and their ideas if they don’t speak to us?”
The Republican who ends up winning the nomination can expect another invitation – to come to Cincinnati next August for the NAACP’s 2008 national convention. The organization, in presidential election years, invites both major party candidates to come talk to the delegates.
“I’m sure the Republican nominee will be invited,’’ said Smitherman, whose branch will host the convention. “But it may not be a very warm reception.”
All four leading GOP presidential candidates told organizers of Thursday’s nationally-televised minority issues forum at Morgan State University that they couldn’t make it because of scheduling conflicts.
But six other GOP contenders – Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Alan Keyes, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul and Duncan Hunter – did show up, even though they are barely registering in the polls in key primary and caucus states.
Tavis Smiley, the talk show host who moderated the debate, suggested on CNN Thursday that the four top-tier candidates have been consistently avoiding minority debates and forums.
He may be right – all 10 GOP contenders were invited to speak at the NAACP’s national convention in Detroit in July, as were the Democratic candidates. Only one, Tancredo, the Colorado congressman who has built his campaign on a crusade against illegal immigrants, showed up. He got a standing ovation from the NAACP delegates.
After the four declined the invitation to Thursday’s forum, Republican leaders around the country – white and black – made it clear they believed it was a mistake.
So, too, did Westwood GOP Rep. Steve Chabot whose 1st Congressional District has more black voters – about 28 percent - than any other district in the country held by a Republican.
Chabot, a seven-term congressman, gets little support from black voters at the polls, but he has not ignored them, holding periodic town hall meetings in the African-American portions of his district.
“Whether you are running for Congress or for president, you make a mistake when you don’t reach out to everyone,’’ said Chabot, who has not endorsed any of the GOP presidential contenders. “These four candidates had a chance go on national television and talk about themselves and their ideas and reach out to a new group of voters. And they didn’t take advantage of it. I don’t understand it.”
In Ohio, Republicans have been trying for decades to sway black voters, who make up about 10 percent of the electorate and who generally vote heavily Democratic.
The potential of black voters in Ohio, a pivotal state, was not lost on President Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004. The Bush-Cheney campaign worked relentless to peel off black voters; and, to some extent it worked – President Bush’s numbers among African-American voters in Ohio went from nine percent in 2000 to 16 percent in 2004, according to CNN exit polls.
Bush won Ohio – and, thus, a second term in the White House – with an 118,000-vote lead out of about 5.6 million cast. Two factors made that possible – a high turnout of white religious voters who came out to back a statewide ban on same-sex marriages and the small but significant increase in black support, according to several independent analyses.
Lincoln Ware, a longtime African-American radio talk show host on WDBZ-AM, said he believes black voters in Ohio and elsewhere will remember the snub.
“People were on the show talking about it this morning,’’ Ware said. “And it’s not going down very well.”
Ware said the snub by the four GOP presidential contenders make it especially hard for people like him – a longtime, loyal black Republican.
“The party keeps saying it is trying to win over more blacks, but every time, something like this happens and they take two steps backwards,’’ Ware said.
“Those of us who are black Republicans are the ones the party looks to take the message to other blacks,’’ Ware said. “But what do we have to sell to them when stuff like this happens? It’s a pretty hard sell.”
Sam Malone, a black Republican who is trying this year to regain the Cincinnati council seat he lost two years ago, said he believes his party is missing an opportunity at a time when blacks are less interested in party labels than in positions on issues.
“Black voters are becoming more sophisticated,’’ Malone said. “We have a chance to speak to them on home ownership, Social Security, education, health care. But when something like this happens, it looks like the Republican party is writing off a whole race of people. And that’s wrong.”