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The one thing that troubles me is that the entirety of the GOP Caucus in MS has not a single Black member (I counted only one “minority”, a lady who is Native American). Although this is the first legislative session since Reconstruction to have a GOP majority, one wonders at what point Black leaders will realize the folly of placing all their eggs in one basket, a likely shrinking Democrat minority. I noticed numerous Black seats the Dem incumbents didn’t even face a GOP challenger.

Of course, that’s not unique to MS. In TN, where the Dems have shrunk to just 27 out of 99 seats in the House, all 14 Blacks in the House are Dems (and make up a 1 seat majority in the caucus, 14-13, although a White guy is still the Minority Leader). 1 Black member, John DeBerry, is a DINO, however, but would probably have difficulty being elected if he switched parties (although a Black Dem from Knoxville in the ‘80s switched parties and actually did manage to win reelection as a Republican before being defeated 2 years later).

TN, unlike MS, also has the situation where virtually all Blacks are packed into urban areas. Of the 14 districts, 1 is in Knoxville, 1 is in Chattanooga, 2 are in Nashville, 9 are in Memphis, and just 1 is in a rural area east of Memphis including part of Jackson (so even this one is part urban). MS has huge swaths of Black majority areas in the rural parts (especially the MS River counties).

MS does have a unique situation where a lot of the black regions of the state are rural areas. When you look at the county-by-county presidential election results, it actually looks competitive for the RATs, because they won a lot of rural counties. Of course, the raw overall numbers meant Romney won it easily.

Due to the RATs gerrymandering my state to have a veto proof majority, a lot of the black neighborhoods in the Chicago have been gerrymandered into a white suburban district, thus resulting in a white RAT representing the district overall. The RATs basically exploit the heavily Democrat black voting strength to ensure a Dem wins regardless of how the suburbs vote, but the Madigan-picked white Dem that wins could care less about the 20% of the district in a poor urban neighborhood. The Dems control virtually every suburban seat in Crook County by snaking it into the city.

The GOP has recruited a number of well qualified conservative black candidates, but unfortunately the result is always the same...no matter how articulate and prominent they are in black neighborhoods, those regions continue to vote 95% RAT, and will automatically vote for a wealthy white RAT over the black Republican who lives in the community.

We actually have one such election coming up this November in the district next to mine. The RAT incumbent/Madigan puppet is Fran Hurley ( http://www.ilga.gov/house/rep.asp?MemberID=2044 ) , and her Republican challenger is Victor Horne, a well qualified black conservative ( http://www.championnews.net/?p=42478 )

The ideal election reform would be to eliminate the candidate's party affiliation being listed on the ballot. Horne could win by knocking on doors and swaying voters one-on-one to vote for him, but as long as Hurley has (D) next to her name on the ballot, she will automatically win huge in the city.