Posted on 05/12/2003 10:59:30 PM PDT by JohnnyZ
The black vote means plenty in a state with one of the highest proportions of African-American populations in the nation. Knowing this, many would-be political figures dedicate a fair percentage of their campaign resources to appealing to the African-American vote in Mississippi. This campaign tactic, however, is largely a rarity among Republicans running for statewide office, say political experts. Former gubernatorial candidate Mike Parker, for instance, did not spend a disproportionate amount of revenues upon wooing the black vote, neither did Gov. Kirk Fordice. vRepublican Mississippi governor candidate Haley Barbour is doing things differently, however. Barbour has enlisted the help of 32-year-old Republican C. Daryl Neely as minority outreach minister, in hopes of trying to attract a heady African-American following.
Neely said that even though Republicans in the past had not required black voters to win, Barbour was determined to attract African-American interest.
“It’s an approach no other Republican candidate statewide has done before,” said Neely, who owns a consulting firm in Jackson. “We are seriously going after all voters, which means we’ll be campaigning just as hard in the black community. Mike Parker lost by 6,000 votes and only got three percent of the black vote. Had Parker worked in the black community and got seven percent of the black vote he’d be governor right now. The African-American vote really means something.”
But the motivation isn’t all about coming out a winner, said the former Jackson city councilman and Jackson mayoral candidate.
“It’s not just about winning this election. It’s about governing. If you take [President] Bush, [former president Ronald] Reagan and Fordice and take away their every black vote then they still would have won their election. You don’t need the black vote to win, but you do need black support to govern. We don’t want Barbour to be governor and 37 percent of the voters have no connection with him.”
Neely said there were many reasons for African-Americans to embrace conservatism and added that many blacks were already philosophically conservative whether or not they knew it or admitted it.
“Most African-Americans in this area are actually conservative,” Neely said. “You see black people driving cars everywhere with pro-life bumper stickers on them, but there’s been a disconnect between being a conservative and being black and being Republican, and I think that through a candidacy that Haley [Barbour] is bringing to the table we’re beginning to make that connection.”
Neely said that even if blacks did not necessarily ally with Republicans like Barbour they still needed to “ally with more independent thinking.”
“I think it’s wrong when both political parties can accept as a given that the African-American sector of the nation’s population will always vote in one direction. For the black community to go Democrat without discussion costs the black community power,” Neely said, because the shiftless devotion allows Democrats to factor out the needs of African-Americans in their pursuit of swing voting whites. Neely said he acknowledges that blacks have a 30-year history of enmity with the Mississippi Republican Party. In 1968 the Republican Party began to actively seduce disenfranchised Southern white Democrats frustrated by the African-American adoption of the Democratic Party. Critics say the “switcheroo,” orchestrated primarily through President Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” infused the party with a separatist mentality. That same mentality, say critics, was evident in former Senate leader Trent Lott’s Dec. 2002 statement in support of the 1948 presidential campaign of Civil Rights opponent, Sen. Strom Thurmond. At Thurmond’s retirement party, Lott said: “[Mississippi] voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.”
Neely said that he was not stung by the Republican senator’s remark.
“I understood the context in which [Lott’s] statement was made when I first heard it. There was an elderly colleague who was on his way out, and some comments were made to make him feel good about his career and his life,” Neely said. “Sure there could have been better words chosen, but it was taken out of context. I did not think for one moment that Lott believed that things would be better in America under segregation.”
When asked if he believed the Republican Party was still a bastion for segregationists, Neely said he doesn’t live in the past and concentrated on “what the party is doing now and the party’s plan for the future.”
“Whether there’s some guy that felt some way in 1950 still around feeling the same way, I don’t know. But you get that on both sides,” Neely said. “Racism and bigotry knows no party, racial or economic boundaries. You have people with different views all around, but as a black Republican in Mississippi I have always felt welcome in the Republican Party and have never felt uncomfortable.”
When asked to respond to the assertion that he may be a “token black,” on the Barbour campaign staff, Neely defended his position.
“I would view a token as somebody with a seat at the table who has no ability. Their ideas and suggestions are not listened to. They sit there and be quiet. I think in this situation you’ll find that this is totally the opposite,” Neely said. “I think I spend just as much one-on-one time with the candidate as anybody else does, including the campaign manager. I think it’s not a token position as it is a serious effort of the candidate to find a qualified person to bring something to the table.”
Neely said African-Americans should seriously consider Barbour as governor “if they feel the state could do better.”
“If you think that jobs are leaving this state, jobs are not being attracted to this state, or if there’s a lack of being able to manage the day-to-day operations such as MDHS and Medicaid, then Haley Barbour has a message for you,” Neely said.
Seems like he'd be a good statewide candidate in 4 years, or maybe for the House.
Seems like he'd be a good statewide candidate in 4 years, or maybe for the House.
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