It is most unusual to be a black Republican. Ask Michael Steele.
Only one in 25 African-Americans identify themselves as Republicans, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. That’s roughly the same number of blacks who voted for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
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Steele is accustomed to being the only African-American in the room. When Steele campaigned among the 168 Republican National Committee members to win the post of party chairman, just three were black.
What is really rare is to be a black Republican elected official.
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When Steele became lieutenant governor in 2002, he was the first African-American from either party ever elected to statewide office in Maryland, which is 30 percent black.
There are currently no black Republicans in the House or Senate. There are no black Republican governors. Last year, among the 7,382 members of state legislatures, 622 were African-Americans. Of those, just 10 were Republicans.
Steele regards this as a tragedy. And an enormous opportunity.
If Republicans could peel away a quarter of the black vote, they would be competitive in places where they haven’t won in years. Steele believes that Republicans and minorities share many conservative values. It is what brought him to the party as a young adult. The challenge is to interest blacks — as well as other minorities — in a party that is overwhelmingly white just after the nation elected a black Democrat as president.
“Now a lot of that’s the Republican Party’s fault, quite frankly, because we stepped away from engagement. And we did not stay connected in a way that helped define the future of African-Americans in terms of what the Republican Party could offer,’’ Steele told C-SPAN of the party’s poor standing among blacks in 2005.
His advice to the party at the time: “Show up. Show up. Go into the communities.’’
Now that he’s party chairman, Steele says he intends to do just that.
