We'll be going over to Herenton Campaign HQ for the 11 a.m. "free-for-all" as the campaign is advertising the press conference. Though the campaign would never admit it, that is exactly the sort of attention-seeking event you are much more likely to see from a candidate trying to play catch up. Candidates who believe they are ahead or who feel they have momentum rarely take such risks. Willie Herenton, of course, has never been accused of going by any conventional political script. So it should be fun; whether it turns out to be insightful remains to be seen.
If Herenton is indeed far behind incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen in the 9th Congressional District Democratic primary -- as one recent poll strongly indicated (though with a high margin-of-error) -- it will be yet another piece of evidence that black voters are NOT as influenced by race as some want to believe. As many political scientists and black political experts so often point out, white politicians have received much more support from black voters over the years than black politicians have from white voters (that's true even if you start the timeline in, say, 1980 or 1990).
The argument can be made, more and more, that black voters care deeply about substance -- public policy matters. I was away with my family last week in Alabama when U.S. Rep. Artur Davis -- a young black Harvard-trained lawyer -- was "stunned" in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by Ron Sparks, the state's 56-year-old white Agricultural Commissioner. Davis got only 38 percent of the vote, and analysis of election results show that he lost in large part because black voters in his base of Birmingham and his congressional district abandoned him. Here is Chuck Dean of The Birmingham News:
If Herenton is indeed far behind incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen in the 9th Congressional District Democratic primary -- as one recent poll strongly indicated (though with a high margin-of-error) -- it will be yet another piece of evidence that black voters are NOT as influenced by race as some want to believe. As many political scientists and black political experts so often point out, white politicians have received much more support from black voters over the years than black politicians have from white voters (that's true even if you start the timeline in, say, 1980 or 1990).
The argument can be made, more and more, that black voters care deeply about substance -- public policy matters. I was away with my family last week in Alabama when U.S. Rep. Artur Davis -- a young black Harvard-trained lawyer -- was "stunned" in the Democratic gubernatorial primary by Ron Sparks, the state's 56-year-old white Agricultural Commissioner. Davis got only 38 percent of the vote, and analysis of election results show that he lost in large part because black voters in his base of Birmingham and his congressional district abandoned him. Here is Chuck Dean of The Birmingham News:
In predominantly black counties such as Wilcox and Perry, Sparks got 70-plus percent of the vote. In Greene, Marengo, Lowndes and Hale counties, Sparks picked up 60-plus percent of the vote. In Pickens, Dallas and Macon counties, Sparks got 50-plus percent of the vote. Davis lost his home county, Jefferson, where Sparks racked up 58 percent of the vote. Davis won only a single majority black polling place in all of Jefferson County. He even lost his own polling place -- Southtown Housing Community Center -- by a handful of votes to Sparks.And why did Davis lose? Many who follow politics closely in Alabama say that those black voters punished Davis for voting against policies they supported, most notably the way in which he opposed national health-insurance reform. He was the only African-American congressman to oppose health-care reform, and it was one of many stances he took that positioned him as a moderate. But that move away from the left cost him in the primary. This is what Birmingham-Southern College political science professor Natalie Davis told the News:
"It's stunning. It's absolutely amazing. You can't thumb your nose at your base, and that is what Artur did when he voted no on health care. Still, when you look at how Davis lost a race that was so much his to win, it's just staggering."
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