With so many black members of Congress, why have there been so few black senators and why is Obama the first black candidate with a real chance to be president?
According to a fascinating article in today’s Wall Street Journal, Abigail Thernstrom argues with great force that a great deal of the blame must be laid at the feet of the Voting Rights Act.
“The Voting Rights Act perplexingly integrates the Congress by separating people into different congressional districts on the basis of race,” political scientist David Lublin has noted. The statute has conferred on minority candidates a unique privilege: protection from white competition. In theory, there are no group rights to representation in America. In fact, the 1965 statute has created a system of reserved seats for blacks and Hispanics.
Almost all members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been elected to fill a reserved seat. They run in what Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has called “segregated” districts. These are districts devoid of the normal political pressures that encourage candidates to move to the political center. Candidates win … by emphasizing their racial bona fides, their commitment to representing black interests, and their far-left convictions — matching those of most black voters. It is not a recipe for winning in statewide and other majority-white settings.
Read the whole thing.
This article is quite revealing.
At the opposite end of this spectrum is the the 12th Congressional District in which Chinatown, NYC, is located. It has the largest population of Chinese Americans on the East Coast, yet the 12th Congressional District is gerrymandered. The Chinese Americans were never able to elect a representative to Congress as a result of this gerrymandering and dirty politics.
http://www.house.gov/velazquez/ny12/index.html
About NY-12
New York’s 12th Congressional District, located in New York City, is the only Congressional district to include parts of three boroughs.
This diverse district includes parts of:
* Brooklyn (Bushwick, Greenpoint, Red Hook, Sunset Park and Williamsburg neighborhoods)
* Queens (Maspeth, Ridgewood and Woodside neighborhoods)
* Manhattan (part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, East Village and Chinatown)
Map of New York’s 12th Congressional District
(see an interactive version at GovTrack’s NY-12 page)
Former Governor Gary Locke, as far as I know, is the only non-white and Chinese American elected by a mostly white constituency without racial politics. He, ironically dropped out of politics for higher national office, mainly because of racial slurs hurled against him by bigots.
Click on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Locke_(politician)
Gary Faye Locke (born January 21, 1950) was the Democratic governor of Washington (1997-2005), and the first and to date only Chinese American governor in United States history.[1]
Contents
[hide]
* 1 Background
* 2 Career
* 3 Leaving office
* 4 Footnotes
* 5 External links
[edit] Background
Locke was born in Seattle, Washington. As a third-generation American with paternal ancestry in Taishan, Guangdong Province in China, Locke is the second of five children of James (from the United States) and Julie Locke (from Hong Kong). His parents gave him the Chinese name of Lok Ga-fai; his middle name “Faye” comes from an Americanized spelling of his Chinese name. He graduated with honors from Seattle’s Franklin High School in 1968. Through a combination of part-time jobs, financial aid and scholarships, Locke attended Yale University, earning a bachelor’s degree in political science in 1972. He then went on to receive his law degree from the Boston University School of Law in 1975. Locke is an Eagle Scout and recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.[1][2]
In 1994, he married Mona Lee Locke, a Seattle television reporter born to a father from Shanghai and a mother from Hubei. They have three children: Emily Nicole, Dylan James, and Madeline Lee. Locke is a Baptist.[2]
[edit] Career
In 1982, his South Seattle district elected him to the Washington House of Representatives, where he served as chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Eleven years later, in 1993, he made history by becoming the first Chinese American to be elected King County’s County Executive, defeating incumbent Tim Hill. In 1996, he won the primary and general elections for governor, becoming the first major Chinese American head of government in North America. He easily won reelection in the 2000 governor’s race.
Democrats criticized Locke for embracing the Republican Party’s no-new-taxes approach to dealing with Washington’s budget woes, during and after the 2001 recession. Among his spending-reduction proposals were laying-off thousands of state employees; reducing health coverage; freezing most state employees’ pay; and, cutting funding for nursing homes and programs for the developmentally disabled. In his final budget, Locke suspended two voter-passed, pro-school initiatives while cutting state education funding. That same state budget, though, had record-high allocations for construction projects.
On the national stage, Democrats saw Gary Locke as a rising star and a possible vice-presidential pick. He was chosen to give the Democrat’s response to George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. Meanwhile back at home, former Washington Supreme Court Justice Phil Talmadge announced his plans to challenge Locke (supported by the state’s political left) in the 2004 primary. Talmadge ultimately ended his campaign early, though, for health reasons.
[edit] Leaving office
In a surprise move, Locke announced in July 2003 that he would not seek a third term, saying, “Despite my deep love of our state, I want to devote more time to my family.” In 2007 he declined a bid for the office of President of the United States and soon after came out in support of Hillary Clinton.
Susan Paynter, a columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, suggested that slurs, insults, and threats that Locke and his family received, especially the large number which came after his rebuttal to George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, played a role in Locke’s decision to leave office after two terms. Senator Ken Jacobsen, whom Paynter interviewed for her article, mentioned one e-mail reading “Why don’t you and your family get on a boat and go back to China?” as a particularly racist example among hundreds of threatening letters and e-mails received by the governor’s office around that time; others threatened to kill his children.[3]
Locke left office on January 12, 2005. If the disputed 2004 election between Christine Gregoire and Dino Rossi had not been resolved by then, the state constitution mandated that Locke would have remained in office.[citation needed] Upon leaving Washington’s governorship, Locke joined the Seattle office of international law firm Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, in their China and governmental-relations practice groups. Governor Locke has signed on as Washington co-chairman of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s bid for president.[4]
The other non-white Governor elected since Reconstruction is Bobby Jindal, a South East Asian (Indian) of Louisiana.
I believe he also ran on a non race-based platform, appealing to all groups.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/21/louisiana.governor.ap/index.html
Louisiana elects first nonwhite governor since Reconstruction
* Story Highlights
* Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal, son of Indian immigrants, wins 53 percent of vote
* Nearest rivals had 18 percent, 14 percent, 13 percent of vote
* Former Oxford student lost ’03 governor’s race to Blanco, who didn’t run in ’07
* Taking office in January, 36-year-old to be nation’s youngest sitting governor
BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (AP) — U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal became the nation’s youngest governor and the first nonwhite to hold post in Louisiana since Reconstruction when he carried more than half the vote to defeat 11 opponents.
Jindal, the Republican 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants, had 53 percent with 625,036 votes with about 92 percent of the vote tallied. It was more than enough to win Saturday’s election outright and avoid a November 17 runoff.
“My mom and dad came to this country in pursuit of the American dream. And guess what happened. They found the American Dream to be alive and well right here in Louisiana,” he said to cheers and applause at his victory party.
His nearest competitors: Democrat Walter Boasso with 208,690 votes or 18 percent; Independent John Georges had 167,477 votes or 14 percent; Democrat Foster Campbell had 151,101 or 13 percent. Eight candidates divided the rest.
“I’m asking all of our supporters to get behind our new governor,” Georges said in a concession speech.
The Oxford-educated Jindal had lost the governor’s race four years ago to Gov. Kathleen Blanco. He won a congressional seat in conservative suburban New Orleans a year later but was widely believed to have his eye on the governor’s mansion. VideoWatch more about Jindal’s rise to the governor’s office »
Blanco opted not to run for re-election after she was widely blamed for the state’s slow response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
“My administration has begun readying for this change and we look forward to helping with a smooth transition,” she said in a prepared statement. “I want to thank the people of Louisiana for the past four years, though there is still much work to do in my last few months as your governor.”
When he takes office in January, Jindal will become the nation’s youngest governor in office. He pledged to fight corruption and rid the state of those “feeding at the public trough,” revisiting a campaign theme.
“They can either go quietly or they can go loudly, but either way, they will go,” he said, adding that he would call the Legislature into special session to address ethics reform.
Political analysts said Jindal built up support as a sort of “buyer’s remorse” from people who voted for Blanco last time and had second thoughts about that decision. Blanco was widely criticized for the state’s response to Hurricane Katrina and she announced months ago that she would not seek re-election.
“I think the Jindal camp, almost explicitly, (wanted) to cast it this way: If you were able to revote, who would you vote for?” said Pearson Cross, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette political scientist.
Jindal has held a strong lead in the polls since the field of candidates became settled nearly two months ago.
But the two multimillionaires in the race — Boasso, a state senator from St. Bernard Parish, and Georges, a New Orleans-area businessman — poured millions of their own dollars into their campaigns to try to prevent Jindal’s victory.
Campbell, a public service commissioner from Bossier Parish, had less money but ran on a singular plan: scrapping the state income tax on businesses and individuals and levying a new tax on oil and gas processed in Louisiana.
The race was one of the highest-spending in Louisiana history. Jindal alone raised $11 million, and Georges poured about $10 million of his personal wealth into his campaign war chest while Boasso plugged in nearly $5 million of his own cash.
This is a second test.
(JSW4: This was submitted by a trusted commenter, who was authenticate by his type key.)