In S.C., Beauty Salons Are Also Political Soapboxes

By Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 14, 2007

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- At Hair Menders Unlimited beauty salon the other day, owner Margaret Bell was working up a soapy lather in a customer's thin, gray hair when a conversation in the waiting room took a dangerous turn.

"My girlfriend and her daughters went to see Obama downtown -- paid $100 for tickets," said a retired school janitor as she waited her turn for the shampoo bowl. Another woman, waiting for her biweekly appointment to cover her grays with red dye, responded with a nice-if-you-can-afford-it look, but from the next room came a loud voice.

"Hillary was just here at the NAACP banquet," said Bell, ignoring the suds dripping down her customer's forehead.

She didn't have to say anything more. The regulars at Hair Menders -- mostly retired African American women older than 60 -- know that Bell is a Hillary Clinton enthusiast with a knack for turning any political conversation to her favorite presidential hopeful and any down-talking of Clinton into something positive. Mention something about Bill Clinton's White House philandering, for instance, and she'll say: "I'm glad she stayed. Hillary's no fool."

When South Carolina Democrats vote in their presidential primary in January, African American women will make up 29 percent of voters. One place Clinton and her main opponent, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, think they can reach them is at the hairdresser's.

"Girl, that's where we like to spend our time. If I could, I'd be in a beauty salon now," Clinton's state director, Kelly Adams, said with a laugh. "Seriously, we have to go where the voters are."

Both Adams and Obama's South Carolina campaign director, Stacey Brayboy, are black women who understand that beauty salons allow for intimate exchanges. They are escapes from a woman's hectic life -- places where the pulls of work, husbands and kids take a back seat to a new hairstyle and a good talk.

Eighteen miles from Hair Menders, in the small city of Goose Creek, Obama staffer Lauren Champaign, 21, darted through the afternoon rain and into Passion Slice hair salon, a modern-looking place in one of the growing community's newer strip malls. She greeted the owner, Shanaya Hammond, with a familiar "Hey!" and a few minutes later stood in the middle of the shop introducing herself to women getting their hair cut, dyed and curled.

"We need your support, y'all," Champaign said over the buzz of domed hair dryers in a room decorated with abstract art and thick with the smell of hair spray and oil sheen. "I want you to vote for Senator Barack Obama not just because I work for him. I don't want you to vote for him because he is the black candidate or just because you think he's cute, but because he is the best candidate."

The salon is one of dozens Champaign has visited since she started working for Obama in the spring. The polls show that her candidate has made progress among black women in this state, but the latest Washington Post-ABC News national poll found that black women support Clinton over Obama 54 to 35 percent, giving Champaign's job urgency. Obama's camp wants badly to win the black vote, and beauty and barber shop visits -- which Obama's campaign calls "the B&B strategy" -- play a big role in its grass-roots organizing.

As each side makes its case across the state, the beauty shop politicking has become a contest of race vs. gender: Do you identify with Obama because he's black or Clinton because she's a woman?

Clinton won Bell's undying support in part by playing on her femininity. In addition to the policy pronouncements she gave during the keynote at a black hairdressers' convention this summer, Clinton ran through a slide show of her hairstyles through the years.

A long bob with short bangs.

A short bob with tall 1980s bangs.

A mini-bouffant as a brunette.

A straight slick cut hitting at the chin.

"Go 'head, woman," someone in the audience said. "You've got more power than any woman in this whole world." Bringing news and a DVD of Clinton's presentation back to Charleston was Katie B. Catalon, a retired beautician who is also Bell's sister-in-law. Catalon, in her fourth term as president of the National Beauty Culturists' League -- an 8,000-member organization of black hairstylists founded 88 years ago -- is a seasoned beauty shop campaigner in her own right and an eager Clinton volunteer.

Catalon met Clinton at a reception in the 1990s when Bill Clinton was campaigning in Charleston. "It was strange, because we were there at the reception, and I walked toward her, and she was walking towards me. And we held hands. She said thank you so much for being here, and I said, 'I should be thanking you,' " Catalon recalled.

When the senator from New York announced her run for president, Catalon called the campaign and offered to help connect Clinton with black beauty salon owners. Bell was one of the first enlistees. From her stylist's station, surrounded by black glue for hair weaves, activator for Jheri-like curls, plastic rollers and hot irons to serve her steady clientele, Bell talks up her candidate.

"We touch a lot of people during the run of the day," said Bell, 63. "We are influential."

Last week, the Clinton campaign mailed hundreds of countertop pop-ups to Bell and other beauty shop owners; they display photos of her changing hairdos under this Clinton quip: "Pay attention to your hair, because everyone else will."

Most of Bell's customers have said they are looking hard at Clinton and Obama. Former senator John Edwards of North Carolina is a distant third, polling in the low single digits among black women here. Bell initially found the candidates so similar on the issues that they were hard to distinguish, so she made her decision based on her sense of their electability.

"I'm not even thinking about color, but I guess in a way I am. I think basically white people won't vote for him," Bell said of Obama. "Isn't that what voting is all about? You are voting for a person that you feel could be a winner."

That pessimism that a black man could ever become president is a powerful force, even for Obama supporters such as Gaynell Wise, 51, an accountant who was getting her hair cut the day Champaign came into Passion Slice.

"I'm voting for him. I'm old-school. I know what's going on," she told Champaign. "He's trying to take this country someplace it's never been before. It's going to take a lot for him to win. I know that. I know the system is not set up for him to win. It's going to take a miracle and a lot of prayers for him to win. If you can get us to vote . . ." Most of the salons Champaign visits are frequented by younger women, who polls show have been more likely than their elders to vote for black presidential candidates.

"I came to the campaign because I was tired and angry," she told the customers at Passion Slice. "I was angry because of what was happening with my family and issues with women being abused. I read 'Dreams From My Father' -- and I suggest that you all read it -- and I was blown away," she said as a hairstylist glanced up from her shears. "This man did everything people were telling me I couldn't do. . . . If we don't get your support now, he won't be around to run in November. We need your help. Who in here is supporting Barack Obama?"

Hammond, the salon owner, stopped combing out her own hair, which had been wrapped atop her head, to clap. Three of the four women in the beauty shop raised their hands in support of Obama, and Champaign, whose lilting accent reflects her roots in Charleston's Gullah creole culture, handed them pledge cards.

"I don't follow all the politics the way that I should, but I will be voting for Barack Obama because he will make a good president," Hammond said. "My first time voting was in the last election, and I rounded up everyone in the shop to go vote against President Bush. . . . Now that I know I need to vote in the primary, I'll vote then, too."

The 22-year-old woman shaping Wise's hair into a short, Halle Berry-like 'do admitted that she wasn't registered. Client took beautician to task.

"Young people don't vote," said Wise, who said she had donated a small amount to Obama's campaign online. "Y'all act like y'all don't even live in this country. If they start sending you over there to that war, I bet you'd vote then."

Champaign handed the young hairstylist a registration card.

"It's long days going out there, talking to people where they are," said Champaign, who gave up a scholarship to Georgetown Law School to stay in Charleston and work for Obama. "That's how much I believe," she said.

She handed Hammond a fresh poster of Obama wearing a black smock as an African American barber in Marion, S.C., trimmed his fade. Then she scooted back out into the rain and to two more stops: Diamond Cutz II and Lucciono.

Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.