FIVE BLACKS, TWO PARTIES – ONLY ONE VICTORY

Five prominent black candidates for governerships and U.S. Senate seats dared to run in this election in races that began as tremendous challenges. Two of them were Democrats, three, Republicans. Three were in the Northeast, while the other two split the South and Midwest. One made history, one landed on the brink; the other three didn’t even come close.

When one looks at the results of this field of candidates in the 2006 election – Senate candidates Michael Steele (R-MD) and Harold Ford (D-Tennessee), and the three gubernatorial candidates, Deval Patrick (D-MA), Lynn Swann (R-PA), and Ken Blackwell (R-OH) – one has to ask questions about some dismal failures.

Question 1: What do we make of the clean sweep of the three black Republican candidates?

One has to wonder whether Ken Mehlman and other Republicans’ strategy to recruit more African American support is less of a strategy than it is hollow rhetoric. Only a few short years ago Republicans moved beyond mere words to action when George W. Bush appointed Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell to the most powerful slots ever held by black individuals in the country’s history. But they can only trot them out for so long as proof that the Republican Party is a welcome place for African Americans. Many blacks are likely asking, “What have you done for us lately?” If the reply is symbolized by this year’s election results, then the answer is an unequivocal “nothing.”

Republicans at this point, if they are indeed interested in recruiting more blacks into the Party, have to really be concerned that their efforts in this election make it seem that all their black candidates were nothing more than window-dressing. This is especially so for Blackwell and Swann – high-profile, well-known suckers lured by a party offering a false sense of hope and support where there was, in reality, little. But it also pertains to Steele, whose (mere) ten-point margin of loss seemed to be in spite of the Republican Party. Steele placed more rhetorical currency in downplaying party allegiances and support for Bush and other prominent Republicans, signaling perhaps that he himself didn’t drink the same Party Kool-Aid offered to Swann and Blackwell.

Question 2: What do we make of the Democratic victory in Massachusetts and near win in Tennessee?

The contests involving Harold Ford, Jr. and Deval Patrick are in some ways both historical, even though Patrick is the only one who gets to walk away with the prize. That a black man was elected to Massachusetts’s highest office is testament to a state perhaps not best-known historically for its racial tolerance, lack of intense racial conflicts, or election of blacks to political office.

Similarly, in Tennessee, Ford’s narrow loss is quite remarkable given that the racial divide seems very much in tact. Exit poll results show that Ford didn’t do all that well with white voters in Tennessee, even compared to the other black candidates this year. Only 40% of whites in Tennessee voted for Ford, as compared to 43% of whites in Pennsylvania for Swann, 40% of whites in Ohio for Blackwell, 50% of whites in Maryland for Steele, and 51% of whites in Massachusetts for Patrick. Ford pulled 60% of the vote in the Memphis area, 53% in Western Tennessee, and no more than 48% in the rest of the state. Despite his claims that he “likes. . .girls,” Ford only managed to get 42% of white women to vote for him (91% of non-white women voted for Ford). At the end of the day, race still mattered in Tennessee, and there simply were not enough African Americans voting in the state to put Ford over the top.

As we’ve noted before, it is very difficult for black candidates to win high profile statewide races because white voters generally do not vote for black candidates. Remember, this race was never supposed to be close. That it was is testament to a brilliant campaigner, a party willing to take risks, and a constituency (or at least part of a constituency) able to perhaps put race on a back burner when making the choice of a most suitable candidate.