EAST AUSTIN REPUBLICANS DINNER PICTURES

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 13 2004

COMMENTARY

Phillips: GOP tries new tactics to recruit black voters

Alberta Phillips, AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Thursday, September 23, 2004

I've always been amused by white folks' perception that blacks are liberal, especially when I'm sitting in a pew on Sunday mornings.

In any number of African American churches in Austin or across the country, you might easily get the idea you were at a meeting of the Republican-leaning Christian Coalition, based on the text of the sermons.

Black ministers and many in their congregations fall on the same side as the Republican Party's conservative wing when it comes to gay marriage, abortion, school choice and school prayer. There is a heavy dose of personal responsibility in sermons — urging fathers to take responsibility for their children, women to yield to men as heads of the household and youths to reject drugs, crime and friends who steer them into trouble.

Those, too, are popular themes with the GOP. Even so, the party has failed to make inroads with blacks, who once were as loyal to the elephant as they now are to the donkey.

I could fill this space with reasons why the Republican Party is persona non grata with many black people. I'd certainly include the party's two-faced stance on respect for life and the family — it wants to halt abortions but expand state executions; celebrate the family, but toss poor children off government health insurance programs.

But at the top of my list of why Republicans have failed to convert blacks is that they've dispatched the wrong messengers to recruit them. To win the trust of whites, black Republicans have emphasized their conservative credentials and played down their heritage. De-emphasizing their culture made them more attractive to whites but less appealing to blacks.

That's why many African Americans reject leaders such as Ward Connerly, who made a name by eliminating affirmative action in higher education in California, but why Colin Powell is still popular. Powell, the first African American secretary of state, never wavered in his support of affirmative action. If anything, he shored up his support among African Americans by breaking with his boss, President Bush, who opposed the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies.

Black arch-conservatives actually do more harm than good in wooing blacks because, let's be honest, African Americans view them largely as sellouts. Absent certain cultural credentials, a black face is not enough to win votes or recruits.

"The community asks us one question first, second and third: 'Are you still black?' " said Michael Williams, Texas railroad commissioner, a Republican.

After getting nowhere with extremely conservative blacks, the GOP is changing its tactics. Perhaps it knows that it can't remain the majority party in Texas with white votes alone, or keep control of all three branches of federal government. To stay on top, it has no choice but to attract minority voters in significant numbers. Increasing Bush's share of the black vote to 20 percent could help swing this year's election to the president, Williams said. Bush took 9 percent of the black vote in 2000.

That's why boxing promoter Don King has hit the campaign trail for Bush and why Williams, too, is crisscrossing Texas and the country. And it's why Jacqueline Hawkins has formed the East Austin Republicans club.

"We aren't about a hard sale at this time, but make no mistake, we let people know why this president deserves another four years," Hawkins said.

Like many successful African Americans, Hawkins lives in West Austin. But she has never moved her church membership out of East Austin, home to most of the city's black churches. As the wife of Bush friend and former budget adviser Albert Hawkins, who heads the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, Jacqueline Hawkins has been a guest at White House dinners and moves in the elite circles of the powerful, from Austin to Washington, D.C. But her cultural credentials are intact.

When she called the GOP club's first outreach meeting last week, the names included high-profile civil rights leaders and the city's most influential black preachers. And most showed up. They were impressed by what they heard and especially by what they saw: Texas' only statewide elected African Americans — Williams; Wallace Jefferson, the newly appointed chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court; and Dale Wainwright, also a jurist on the court. The three — who are, as Williams put it, "conservative, but stylistically and authentically black" — were striking figures for the GOP.

Williams and Hawkins believe the Republican message of expanded homeownership and lending for small businesses, as well as Bush's initiative to divert government money to faith-based programs, is an easy sell with the right messengers. They've got a point.

But they recognize that if the party truly wants to compete for black votes, it must overcome blacks' image of the party as one that is insensitive to the less fortunate and hostile to civil rights.

After all, it was the Republicans' embrace of segregationists and their policies — and Democrats' support for civil rights — that drove blacks to trade in their elephants for donkeys.