Where My People At????Former Md. lieutenant governor Michael Steele is only one of 36 black delegates at the Republican convention here — less than 2% of the total and a sharp drop-off from 2004, a black think tank reports.
Nevermind a pregnancy that the McCain/Palin campaign clearly wanted to hide (note the 17-year-old at Friday's press conference being strategically covered by a baby and matching nursing bib), this is the real controversy!
The Democratic Party, which has targets for minority representation, said a record 24.5% of delegates at its convention last week were black. That's about twice the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population, according to the Census. The GOP set a record with 6.7% black delegates in 2004.
Republican convention officials did not respond to several requests for comment on the report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
The center said Republican John McCain likely will end up with a historically low share of the black vote despite his outreach to groups such as the National Urban League and the NAACP.
The chief reasons, the group said, are Democratic nominee Barack Obama's enormous appeal to black voters and McCain's "association with President Bush, an exceptionally unpopular figure" among blacks.
The report said McCain also is hurt because his home state of Arizona has few blacks and there are no well-known black elected officials to make his case.
GOPAC chairman Michael Steele, whose group helps elect Republicans to state and local office, said the black community "has to get out of the mind-set that anything the Republican Party says is bad for them."
But Steele, who is black, also said that "black folks aren't going to flock to the GOP unless they have something to flock to." He urged his party to stop superficial "outreach" programs and start building coalitions and relationships with black voters.
One black convention delegate, Robert Smith of Little Rock, said he was amused but not surprised at the tiny number of blacks. He said he is on a personal mission to win back blacks he says are "voting for Barack Obama out of ethnicity rather than principle." If he's successful, he said, "this will be the last time you see so few" blacks at a GOP convention.
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Nevermind a pregnancy that the McCain/Palin campaign clearly wanted to hide (note the 17-year-old at Friday's press conference being strategically covered by a baby and matching nursing bib), this is the real controversy!
The Democratic Party, which has targets for minority representation, said a record 24.5% of delegates at its convention last week were black. That's about twice the percentage of blacks in the U.S. population, according to the Census. The GOP set a record with 6.7% black delegates in 2004.
Republican convention officials did not respond to several requests for comment on the report by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
The center said Republican John McCain likely will end up with a historically low share of the black vote despite his outreach to groups such as the National Urban League and the NAACP.
The chief reasons, the group said, are Democratic nominee Barack Obama's enormous appeal to black voters and McCain's "association with President Bush, an exceptionally unpopular figure" among blacks.
The report said McCain also is hurt because his home state of Arizona has few blacks and there are no well-known black elected officials to make his case.
GOPAC chairman Michael Steele, whose group helps elect Republicans to state and local office, said the black community "has to get out of the mind-set that anything the Republican Party says is bad for them."
But Steele, who is black, also said that "black folks aren't going to flock to the GOP unless they have something to flock to." He urged his party to stop superficial "outreach" programs and start building coalitions and relationships with black voters.
One black convention delegate, Robert Smith of Little Rock, said he was amused but not surprised at the tiny number of blacks. He said he is on a personal mission to win back blacks he says are "voting for Barack Obama out of ethnicity rather than principle." If he's successful, he said, "this will be the last time you see so few" blacks at a GOP convention.
Source