In quest for Black votes, Republicans spin their wheels

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Berkowitz-Black cons. whiff in Election; Black Preachers to take lead for GOP
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:53:53 -0500 (EST)
From: WKBBronx@aol.com
To: AuntVarn@aol.com


In quest for Black votes, Republicans spin their wheels

While Black voters continue to reject the Republican Party, conservative Black ministers such as Bishop Harry R. Jackson are looking to Black mega-churches for GOP converts

Bill Berkowitz
December 18, 2006

http://www.mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=168

Despite the calculated outreach efforts by the Bush Administration -- spearheaded by Ken Mehlman, the former head of the Republican National Committee -- to turn the Black vote, exit polling from the 2006 election showed that close to 90 percent of Black voters stayed firmly with Democratic Party candidates. And, although the GOP fielded what they thought were several attractive Black candidates for state-wide races around the country -- former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann ran for governor in Pennsylvania, Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele contended for that state's vacated Senate seat, and Ohio's Secretary of State, and longtime party activist, Kenneth Blackwell was that state's GOP gubernatorial candidate -- the Party failed to win any of those contests. (Swann received 13 percent of the Black vote; Steele received 25 percent; and Ohio's Blackwell received only 20 percent of the Black vote.)

Once again the GOP failed to gain traction within the Black community.

"The Black vote played a critical role in the outcome of a number of closely contested elections, especially for the U.S. Senate," David A. Bositis pointed out in his report titled "Blacks and the 2006 Midterm Elections." Bositis, a Senior Research Associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies , noted that while national turnout of Black voters was "up slightly" from the 2002 midterm elections, "it was strategically effective in several places, although not enough in others."

Read the full report:

http://www.mediatransparency.com/story.php?storyID=168

As if all the vote suppression and racist ads had just been forgotten :eyes:

Nice epitaph.

Apparently, they weren't quite attractive enough to make blacks forget how ugly Republican policies can be. Or were they expected to be too loyal to their race to notice?

:headbang:
rocknation