In some Nov. 8 editions, a photo caption with a Style article misidentified Massachusetts Gov.-elect Deval Patrick as Senate candidate Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee. Also in those editions, the photo, which was taken by Charles Krupa of the Associated Press, was credited to another photographer.
Red State and Blue, Reflected in Black and White
Wednesday, November 8, 2006; Page D04
Ike Leggett's victory party looked like a Hollywood version of the American political dream. Whites, blacks, Chinese, Koreans and Hispanics all turned out to celebrate the first black man elected Montgomery County executive.
Only 10 percent of the county is black.
  Ike Leggett, Montgomery County executive-elect: "You have to give credit to citizens who were prepared to vote across racial lines." (By Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post) 
|
"Ike's been in the county for so long, I guess race isn't an issue for him anymore," said county resident Robert Ford, a 35-year-old black firefighter.
Leggett's victory, coupled with other racial milestone elections, would seem to raise the question: When will it be time to retire the phrase "the first black to . . . " from electoral politics?
Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman to make a bid for the presidency, did that 30-something years ago. Can we think of something else to say now?
The issue won't be passe "until we have the first black president, then it's over," noted David A. Bositis, senior researcher at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
In the meantime, Democrat Deval Patrick has become the first black governor of Massachusetts (and only second in the nation elected after Reconstruction, after Virginia's Doug Wilder). Patrick, it seems, is so over that.
"I don't think [race] has been an issue in the campaign because I'm not offering to be just the first black governor," he told Reuters.
Michael Steele in Maryland and Harold Ford in Tennessee ran formidable Senate campaigns -- Ford in a former Confederate state. Each took a centrist stand on most issues. Neither emphasized race, and tried to transcend it in their general campaigns (except, of course, when they were talking with black voters). They each drew white votes.
But there's the inexorable tide of history: The number of black elected officials in the nation has grown every single year since 1970 , according to the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
There are 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, one black senator, 613 blacks in statewide office, and about 9,000 more at local levels.
Throw in Colin Powell and the two most recent African Americans touted as presidential timber, Condoleezza Rice and Barack Obama, and really, race seems to be moving into the rearview mirror.
