Essay 1018

From The Plain Dealer…

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Campaigns find diverse ways to play race card

By JULIE CARR SMYTH
The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — When you bring up race in a political campaign, be careful how you do it.

No one was alarmed last week, for example, when GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, who is black, brought black ministers from around the country before reporters as a show of their support for his campaign.

Nor has it raised any eyebrows for Blackwell’s opponent, Democrat Ted Strickland, who is white, to overtly cultivate Ohio’s big-city mayors — most of whom are black — to support his candidacy and his urban proposals.

And neither Democrats nor Republicans have caught flak when they’ve vigorously courted the black vote this year by hosting visits from black stars, such as Sen. Barack Obama, or summits aimed at boosting black membership in the party.

Just don’t try conducting a poll to see whether race is going to be a factor in Ohio this fall.

That’s what Mary Taylor, the Republican candidate for auditor, did last week — when her campaign asked in a telephone poll whether voters would be swayed if they knew her opponent, state Rep. Barbara Sykes, is president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus.

Taylor, who is white, has said she was testing information about her opponent’s strengths and considers Sykes’ role as leader of the black caucus to be one of those strengths.

Her adversaries portrayed the question as race-baiting. For Ohio Senate Minority Leader C.J. Prentiss, a former president of the OLBC, the distinction is clear.

“I think in Barbara’s literature, there’s probably a bullet that says ‘president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus,’” said Prentiss, who is black. “I think in a poll, though, it’s a trigger word, to see if it really matters. It’s like me saying, ‘Do you know that blank-blank goes to synagogue every Saturday?’ Maybe he does, but what’s the trigger word there? It’s synagogue, it’s this guy is a Jew.”

The question of how race will play in the Nov. 7 election is exasperating to Ohio’s political prognosticators. Blackwell, who would be Ohio’s first black governor, is thought to have the potential to cut into some of the Democratic Party’s black base.

His presence at the top of the Republican ticket also presents a challenge to the diversity-seeking Democrats, who are running two white men for governor and lieutenant governor in Strickland and his running mate Lee Fisher. It is the question everyone wants to answer but no one, until Taylor, was willing to ask.

When news of the poll question surfaced, Ohio Republican Party spokesman John McClelland noted Blackwell’s presence on the party’s ticket as evidence of the party’s obvious inclusiveness. Blackwell declined comment on the issue last week, saying he lacked background on the poll.

Sykes and Supreme Court candidate Ben Espy represent needed diversity on the Democrats’ ticket if they want to retain the support of their racially diverse followers, and Prentiss said the party’s objections to Taylor’s poll question shouldn’t imply that they would see Sykes’ race as a negative in November.

“Even though we’re celebrating that the ticket is more diverse with Barbara and Ben Espy on it, and her position on the Black Caucus is seen as a positive, this just shows a sign of desperation that could be troubling down the road,” she said. “Where will it take the campaign?”

Taylor’s campaign declined to comment beyond the statement she issued earlier this week, in which she rejected the notion that the poll question was intended as a slur.

Tufts University political scientist Jeffrey Berry said there are ways to test the race question without being racist, but Taylor did not employ them. You could, for example, conduct focus groups that weigh the same information when presented next to a white candidates’ face and then next to that of a black candidate, he said.

“Measuring race relations is a valid enterprise,” he said. “I think why this is offensive is because what you’re doing is suggesting that that’s a negative and asking how they feel about that. You’re sort of loading it, going beyond basic information about whether race is a factor into essentially how can I use race against this candidate.”