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Dispute over New Black Panthers case causes deep divisions
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Others from the Republican Party showed up that day, including Stephen Morse, a videographer and recent University of Pennsylvania graduate. Morse pulled out a video camera and focused on Heath.
Less than 15 minutes later, Philadelphia police arrived. A one-page police report says officers allowed Jackson to stay because he was a poll watcher but asked Heath to leave.
"That's why you're going to be ruled by a black man, now!" Heath shouted as he departed, according to witnesses. They said he also called Obama a "tool of the white man."
Morse raced back to the GOP headquarters. "This footage is golden," he recalled thinking. But Hill stayed put. A Republican official, he said, alerted him that Fox News was sending a reporter.
Within two hours, Morse's video had been uploaded to ElectionJournal.org, a conservative Web site, and Fox played it in newscasts. CNN posted the video online.
Calls poured into the Philadelphia district attorney's office reporting voter intimidation at Guild House. But staff members realized they were from cable news viewers as far away as Florida.
No call had come from a registered voter in Philadelphia. The office would deem the day's event a "non-incident.''
Deepening a divide
In Washington that day, word of the racially charged dispute reached the voting section of Justice's Civil Rights Division, a unit already divided over issues of race and enforcement.
The complaint went to Christopher Coates, the section's chief. A respected voting expert, Coates had been hired at Justice during the Clinton administration after a stint with the American Civil Liberties Union. He also came up in an internal watchdog report criticizing politicized hiring at the division during the Bush administration. The report referred to him as "a true member of the team."
Since the division was created in 1957, most of its cases have been filed on behalf of minorities. But there has not always been agreement about that approach.
Civil rights officials from the Bush administration have said that enforcement should be race-neutral. But some officials from the Obama administration, which took office vowing to reinvigorate civil rights enforcement, thought the agency should focus primarily on cases filed on behalf of minorities.
"The Voting Rights Act was passed because people like Bull Connor were hitting people like John Lewis, not the other way around," said one Justice Department official not authorized to speak publicly, referring to the white Alabama police commissioner who cracked down on civil rights protesters such as Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia.