Seeking to gauge where each of the 2004 Democratic presidential hopefuls stand on issues important to African Americans, the Congressional Black Caucus is hosting a debate tonight in Baltimore featuring all nine candidates.
The campaign of Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) said Tuesday afternoon that he would attend the debate. On Monday, his campaign said another commitment would prevent him from joining the debate.
Caucus members hope the forum will help keep issues important to black voters high on the candidates' agendas and, at the same time, energize African Americans who may feel disenchanted after the 2000 presidential election.
"There is no dominant front runner in the black community in this election cycle," said Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), a freshman member of the caucus. "It's also a fact that none of the leading candidates . . . come from states with large black populations." Since many of the candidates have not had to count on black support to win on the congressional or state level, according to Davis, they haven't had the experience of going into the black community and having to get large numbers of black votes. "The black vote should never be taken for granted," he said.
The 90-minute debate will air live at 8 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel. Brit Hume of Fox News will moderate the debate, with a panel of National Public Radio's Juan Williams, Ed Gordon of Black Entertainment Television and Farai Chideya, who runs the political Web site PopandPolitics.com.
David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies said black voters play a crucial role in determining the nominee, especially in southern states where there is a greater percentage of African American voters than in northern states.
Of the two black candidates in the field, former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun and civil rights activist Al Sharpton, Bositis said Sharpton is more likely to get support because "he's getting more attention, he's better known than [Moseley Braun], he is a very, very effective speaker, and he has the ability to connect on the ground." But Sharpton, who raised only $55,000 in campaign contributions last quarter, is performing poorly in polls of likely Democratic voters nationwide.
Unlike Bill Clinton or Al Gore, few of the Democratic hopefuls have strong ties to the African American political elite, according to Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Al Gore's 2000 campaign. Most of the 2004 candidates have reached out to black political leaders in part by speaking at the caucus's weekly meetings. Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.), Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.), John Edwards (N.C.) and Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) have appeared.
"This new group is still getting to meet members of the black caucus," Brazile said. Tonight's debate "is a signal that [the] candidates are reaching out to African American voters and not taking them for granted," she said.
It may come down to North versus South, Bositis said. The leading candidates in the Democratic field come from northern states with smaller black populations, which gives Edwards and Graham an opportunity to challenge for the nomination. "To do well, they have to get some black votes in the South," he said. "I think the two white southern candidates would be more likely to get the black vote -- and Gephardt who is from a border state -- than northern candidates like Dean and Kerry and Lieberman."
Dean, whose powerful fundraising and aggressive campaigning has catapulted him to front-runner status, comes from a state with very few black voters. But, according to Bositis, he has two things going for him: Like many African Americans, he opposes the war in Iraq and he aggressively attacks Bush. "For black Democrats, someone who is unabashedly hostile to George Bush is going to be more favorably received," he said.
All 39 members of the Congressional Black Caucus are Democrats. Brazile said the caucus can help the eventual nominee by bringing diversity to battleground states like Missouri, South Carolina and Michigan, where black voters can mean the difference between winning and losing. Members of the caucus can also help raise funds and increase candidates' profiles in the black community.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), caucus chairman, said caucus members were worried that some people "might be a little bit cynical" after the disputed 2000 presidential election. The caucus decided during a January leadership retreat that presidential debates would be the best way to "invigorate African American voters" and to ensure that issues such as jobs, health care and affirmative action "become a part of the agenda of any presidential candidate," he said. Members believed a debate was the best way to influence the process early on in the election cycle.
Brazile said the debate is important because the issues important to the caucus and many of its constituents are overshadowed by the White House's agenda. "The Republicans aren't paying attention to any other issues than their own," she said.
