Kerry Urged to Do More to Get Black Votes

Most black politicians and strategists backed the campaigns of former Vermont governor Howard Dean, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.), said David A. Bositis, a researcher for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

"The election is still five months away," he said. "I have no doubt that Kerry in his campaign is going to mobilize the black vote."

Bositis said some of those who are critical of Kerry, such as Lowery, are dependent on money candidates spend on get-out-the-vote efforts. Whatever Kerry does during the campaign, black activists might not be satisfied, he said.

"There's one thing about this campaign that isn't going to be satisfying to black voters," Bositis said. "The war is going to be the underlying issue of this campaign. There's not going to be a lot of talk about the kind of issues that African Americans would rather hear about."

After so many Democrats were swept out of office in the 2002 elections, a number of black pundits blasted Democratic candidates for waxing conservative and not embracing a campaign message that appealed to black voters.

"The issue is not whether black voters will choose a Democrat, it's how many will turn out to vote," Lowery said.

Jesse L. Jackson said there are 1.1 million unregistered black voters in Georgia and New Jersey alone, yet the party is doing little to enlist them.

Jackson -- the nation's most widely recognized black American, according to polls -- said he is ready to get off the bench and into the game for Kerry, but no one is asking.

"I'm not very close to the campaign," said Jackson, who was traveling throughout Appalachian states in an attempt to interest people in Democratic causes and register them to vote.

Kerry, however, is scheduled to speak today at the annual conference of Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago.

More than ever, Jackson said, black Americans are primed to vote against a sitting president. "Bush has a closed-door policy on civil rights and labor," he said. "He has not met with the NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Congressional Black Caucus, except for once, or organized labor. We don't have access to our government."

Jadotte said it is too early to begin a get-out-the-vote effort. When that happens -- soon, he said -- Kerry's organization will hammer at the issues Jackson mentioned.

Kerry, Jadotte said, is targeting black voters in what he considers to be swing states: Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas and Virginia in the South; Washington in the West; and Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Arthur Blackwell II, a member of the Police Board of Commissioners in Detroit, said he is a ground soldier for Kerry. Critics of the candidate, he said, are overly fond of Clinton and his centrist formula for capturing the White House.

"We need to be a little more sophisticated this time," Blackwell said. "Clinton was a good president, but Clinton nearly destroyed the Democratic Party. [Kerry's] not a warm, fuzzy guy, like maybe a Bill Clinton. You can't reinvent somebody. He's a very personable guy, very smart, but he has his own personality."

Personality is not the issue, said Felicia Davis, executive director of the Benjamin E. Mays Educational Resource Center in Atlanta. It is Kerry's low profile in black communities. "Mr. Kerry shouldn't have any problem at all finding qualified, tremendous black people, and yet there were none around his campaign," she said.

Marc H. Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said Kerry must move now, because Republicans appear eager to compete for black votes.

"The most important thing for African Americans is that our votes are vigorously competed for," Morial said. "The complexity of the African American vote is going to make a big difference."