In a More Diverse America, A Mostly White Convention

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Ask the Delegates

Among delegates on the floor of the Republican National Convention, one message was loud and clear - supporters of McCain-Palin consider the Republican ticket one of change.

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The homogeneity of the audience is sometimes reinforced by delegations' tendency to dress alike. Floridians sported Hawaiian shirts decorated with palm trees Monday night, and more than 150 Texas delegates and alternates wore red shirts and straw cowboy hats Tuesday.

The minority void in St. Paul is amplified for Republicans who watched Obama deliver his acceptance speech in Denver last week. Blacks made up 25 percent of the delegates at Invesco Field, and black musicians Stevie Wonder and John Legend performed before Obama stepped to the lectern. Vendors inside the stadium sold T-shirts with slogans in Spanish. Martin Luther King's son delivered a brief introductory speech.

"You see what Obama has done, and it's a reminder of what's possible," said Tony Leatherman, a black Republican delegate from Texas.

Leatherman paused and scanned the Xcel Energy Center. "It's obvious we could do better," he said.

A recent Post-ABC poll projects Obama with an 88 percent to 7 percent lead over McCain among African American voters, but black Republicans said that's no excuse for their party to give up. McCain spoke this year to the NAACP and the Urban League, but lately his campaign has focused almost exclusively on white voters.

Over the weekend, McCain traveled with his newly announced running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to a rally in Washington County, Pa., whose population is 95 percent white.

"There's no doubt that Senator Obama's popularity is going to stymie our efforts to some extent with minorities, and I understand that," said Williams, the railroad commission chairman. "I know about resources and time and money, and you have to make choices. The heavy resources for us are not going to African American voters. But that's different than making no effort all."

McCain's campaign said Tuesday that its strategy to poach what Davis called "Hillary Clinton voters" might be enough to turn the election, since Obama's most loyal supporters -- young voters and minorities -- often turn out in low numbers on Election Day. But later that night, Steele came to a different conclusion.

"I am not going through another election cycle where we fail to energize and engage minority communities," he said. "Have you ever heard that saying -- about how the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result? Well, what we've done with minorities has become a form of political insanity."