White Candidates Seek Black Voters

Scott is a state representative from Mississippi, chairman of the legislature’s black caucus, and an Al Gore supporter. Or at least she was a Gore supporter.

After listening to both Gore and Bradley speak here earlier this month, at the annual convention of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, she was so impressed with Bradley she retracted her Gore endorsement on the spot and is now enthusiastically backing the former New Jersey senator. “I liked what Bradley said,” Scott told me, “particularly on the living wage. I think he will be gaining more and more support from African Americans.”

Scott’s endorsement will be significant if it can be used as leverage to persuade undecided black voters, if not more of Gore’s black supporters, to take a closer look at Bradley. The logic is simple: If Bradley is to have a real chance of defeating Gore, he must boost his support among blacks in early contests like South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland, Georgia, and Florida, where they will be anywhere from 20 percent to 50 percent of all Democratic voters. “The black vote will be pivotal in determining the Democratic nominee,” says Ron Lester, a Democratic pollster and expert in black voting patterns.

At the moment, that’s a problem for Bradley. Gore, for example, has wrapped up many, many more endorsements from black elected officials: Twenty members of the Congressional Black Caucus are backing him; none are with Bradley. And in a recent Associated Press poll of black voters nationwide, the vice president was leading by 33 points, 57-24. In hopes of building on this lead, Gore was scheduled to attend a major rally in Atlanta on December 11 to show-case his popularity with black voters.

The good news for Bradley? Scott was not the only black legislator who warmly received his speech in Baltimore. Afterwards, I spoke with a number of people in the audience who said that while they weren’t entirely familiar with Bradley, they liked what they heard. “Based on what I saw,” said Charles Hudson, a Louisiana state representative, “I would have no problem supporting Senator Bradley.” Having watched Gore’s speech the day before, Hudson also believes that in his district “Bradley would be a much easier sell than the vice president.”

It’s clear from talking to black legislators that there’s no great enthusiasm for Gore. Typical was the response of Kay Patterson, a South Carolina state senator, when I asked him why he was a Gore supporter. He cited Gore’s service with Bill Clinton and mentioned that Gore has been endorsed by Jim Clyburn, a black congressman from South Carolina. When I pressed him for more reasons, he said, “Over the years Gore has been friendly toward black folks.” But he conceded, “I could just as easily go with Bill Bradley.”

Others agreed that Gore’s support was soft — and that it didn’t seem to be getting any stronger. Donald Bonner, a North Carolina state representative who hasn’t endorsed either candidate, said, “Gore’s lead over Bradley could change very easily.” Kenneth Melvin, a member of Virginia’s House of Delegates, said “The more he distances himself from Clinton, the more he risks alienating his core support from black voters.” (In his entire speech, Gore mentioned Clinton only once, in passing.) Chris Smith, a Florida state representative, had a slightly different complaint: He’s received three letters from the Gore campaign, and all three have been addressed, “Dear Black Elected Official.” Said Smith: “The least they should be able to do is a merge file.”

The Gore campaign seems to understand it needs to firm up its black support. It’s begun running ads on black radio touting Gore’s efforts to preserve affirmative action and his support for Carol Moseley-Braun, the ethically challenged former senator whose ambassadorial nomination was until recently being held up by Senate Republicans. (Bradley is not yet running any ads in the black-oriented media.) And late last month Gore rearranged his schedule so he could attend a tribute to Rosa Parks in Detroit. It conveniently yielded a photo of them posing together, which Gore aides are sure to feature in campaign literature.

Gore and his operatives haven’t stopped there. They’ve also cast Bradley as racially insensitive. In September, after Bradley proposed amending the 1964 Civil Rights Act to provide protection for gays, the Gore campaign said the move would be an invitation for Republicans to repeal other portions of the landmark legislation. That criticism tapered off once Coretta Scott King, the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., said the supported Bradley’s stance. But in the meantime Gore had escalated his demonization of Bradley’s plan for overhauling Medicaid.

Last month, Gore was speaking outside a southern California community center — it just happened to be named for baseball trailblazer Jackie Robinson — and observed that one-third of all black children depend on Medicaid. “I call on Senator Bradley,” thundered Gore, “to reconsider a program that has such a harsh impact on low-income and working families in this country!”

Gore’s campaign manager, Donna Brazile, upped the ante in a subsequent television appearance, charging that Bradley’s “plan to eliminate Medicaid has serious complications and risk in the African-American community.” Speaking on the day of Bradley’s Madison Square Garden fund-raiser, Brazile said, “I don’t have to read a poll or look at statistics, and I’m sure Dr. J wouldn’t have to as well if he called . . . some of his family and relatives.”

Bradley responded a few days later with an appearance at a black medical school in Atlanta, where he chided Gore for using “scare tactics” (he was introduced by black historian Roger Wilkins). But the attacks have continued. In connection with Gore’s speech to the black legislators, his campaign issued a press release high-lighting how blacks would be “disproportionately harmed” by Bradley’s Medicaid proposal. Says Jacques DeGraff, the top black staffer on Bradley’s campaign, “These tactics are not going to work.”

Maybe. Maybe not. At the Baltimore convention of black state legislators, I didn’t speak with anyone who mentioned Bradley’s Medicaid plan as a reason not to support him. A bigger concern for Bradley is name recognition. A Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies poll in August found 42 percent of blacks didn’t know who Bradley was. Ron Lester, the Democratic pollster, points out that if black voters are introduced to Bradley as racially insensitive — the goal of the Gore campaign — it could greatly under-mine his candidacy.

The immediate problem facing Bradley is time. If he’s going to win over southern black voters, he needs to be campaigning in the South. But if he wants his campaign to be alive in March, he needs to fare well in February in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Bradley’s other problem is that he’ll be up against a well-oiled machine when votes start being cast in the South. Gore’s campaign manager, Brazile, developed a highly-successful strategy for getting southern black voters to turn out in 1998, and there’s no doubt she’ll be using it again in the presidential primaries. Indeed, in an interview last month with James Brosnan of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, she was candid about the campaign’s game plan: “I’m pushing to win Iowa, do very, very well in New Hampshire, make [Bradley] defend his base in the East, and force him to come South, where we can take him on and beat him.”

Bradley’s aides may be tempted to chalk that up to campaign bravado. But unless they launch a major organizational effort in the South — and do so quickly — it’s hard to see how Brazile’s prediction won’t come true.

Matthew Rees is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.