In South, Ballot Box Inequality Lingers On News Article from the Boston Globe

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campaiqns, a public campaign and a secret campaignr " the advertisement says.
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(c) L99O Times Newspapers Limited, October 28 ' 1990

,rAnd Ganttrs friends with the liberal nehlspapers won't discuss this secret
campaign That Gantt has run fund-raising ads in gay newspapers that
Cantt f,as raised thousands of dollars in gay and lesbian bars in San Francisco,
New York and l,ilashington. ' ' The message is crude, but might work, in an
electorate with a median age of 53. If it doesn't, Helms will no doubt play his
Iast ace the racial card.

So far, Gantt has managed to make his colour a remarkably minor factor in a
state which is 80? white. His unthreatening demeanour, his refusal to allow
Jesse Jackson to campaign for him and his reputation as a yuppie he is an
architect have cornbined to win him more than 4OZ of the white vote in opinion
poIIs.

Whether this ]eve1 of support will last until election day is doubtful,
however. Recent elections in New York and Virginia produced dramatic last-minute
swings away from black candidates.

Helms has shown in the past that he is willing to adopt virtually any
tactics, and his campaign team has never been beaten. "These boys are Saturday
night alley fighters. You don't count them outr" said Johnson. "Between now
and Tuesday week, Queensberry rules are out the windoh7. "
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LEVEL ]. - 84 OF L27 STORTES

Copyright (c) L990 Globe Newspaper Companyi
The Boston Globe

July 23, 1990, MondaY, CitY Edition

SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. l- P

LENGTH: l-498 words

HEADLINE: In South, ballot box inequality lingers on

BYLINE: By LarrY TYe, Globe Staff

DATELINE: ATLANTA

KEYWORD: RACE RELATION, ELECTION

BODY:
Former Mayor Andrew Young's showing last week in the Georgia governor's race

was hailed by many as another political breakthrough for Southern blacks. But a
closer took reveals two different trends: Blacks still face nearly
insurmountable odds winni-ng white votes in the South, and liberals are scoring
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(c) 1990, The Boston Globe, July 23, l-990

convincj-ng victories in this traditionally conservative region.

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Blacks also find it tough to raise the millions of dollars needed for
statewide campaigns. Mil1er outspent Young three-to-one on television
advertising.

But bigotry is still blacks' biggest roadblock. rrThere's a group of white
voters no-bl-ack candidate can get. They exhibit a kind of racism in the ballot
box theyrd never show on the job or in the social marketplace,rr said Julian
Bond, a black activist who served 20 years in the Georgia Legislature.

potls by The Atlanta Constitution found that a third of whj-tes would be
reluctant to vote for a black. Other surveys suggest the number is even higher,
but whites are reluctant to acknowledge their racism in interviews.

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(c) 1990, The Boston Globe, JuIy 23, 1990

ttThe situation is much, much better than it has been . but we stil1 have
a long way to gortt said Johnny Ford, who is in his l-8th year as mayor of
Tuskegee,-alabima. Ford lost last year to a white in a runoff for the Democratic
congressional nomination, in a district that is l-8 percent black.

That does not mean btacks cannot win in mainly white districts in the South:
young was elected to Congress in Lg72 from a majority-white district, and 62 of
215 black mayors in the South represent communities where more than 50 percent
of the residents are white, according to the Joint Center for Political and
Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington-

And the South is not the only place where ballot-box racism thrives: Blacks
have had trouble winning elections in Boston and other northern cities where
they are a rninority.

But the South has come under special scrutiny because of its tong history of
racial intolerance, and because blacks should fare better in politics here since
they make up a much higher percentage of the population. In Georgia, for
lnslance, Z, percent of residents are black; this compares with 4 percent in
Massachusetts.

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(c) 1990, The Boston G1obe, JuIy 23, l-990

Those expectations have been met only partly. The 29 percent of black mayors
from mainly white cities in the South, for instance, is lower than the 49
percent in the rest of the nation. When aII black officeholders are.added in,
fewer than 10 percent represent districts with white majorities, said Stephen
Suitts of the Southern Regional Council, a policy research group here.

nNo more than 1 in 75 black candidates in majority-white districts wins
office in the South,rr Suitts added.

Hopes were raised this year when blacks were nominated for top offices in
North Carolina, South Carolina and Arkansas, but political pundits say winning
the general elections will be far tougher. For every Harvey Gantt, the
arti-ulate, savvy black Democratic challenging Sen. Jesse Helms of North
Carolina, there is a David Duke, the ex-Klansman running strong in his bid for
the US Senate from Louisiana.

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How did Wilder do so well? He enjoyed a series of special circumstances,
observers sdy, from saving money and political capital by being nominated by a
Democratic convention, to tapping 1j-beral suburbs around Washington the likes of
which do not exi-st in most Southern states, to winning votes from white women
alienated by his opponent's antiabortion stand.

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(c) l-990, The Boston Globe, July 23, l-990

Even with all that going for him, Wilder won by less than L percentage point.
ttWilderrs situation cannot be replicated anywhere else in the Southrtt Suitts

said.

Hastings lrlyman, editor of the Southern Political Report, is more optimistic:
I'The more accustomed Southern whites become to bl-acks being in politics, the
more it will take the race issue away.rr

While blacks were dj-scouraged by l-ast week's primary results, liberals were
ecstatic. Despite powerful backers, three conservative Democrats garnered just
30 percent of the vote for governor in a state long ruled by conservative
Democrats.

Liberals - they caII themselves populists or prog:ressives here - have been
equally successful in other Democratic gubernatorial prirnaries this year: Ann
Richards, remembered for her stinging criticisrn of President Bush at the
Democratic National Convention in 1988, won the nomination in Texas; Theo
Mitchel], a black ally of Rev. Jesse Jackson, in South Carolina; Paul Hubbert,
head of the teachers' lobby, in Alabama; and i-ncumbent Gov. Bill Clinton, a
darling of liberals, in Arkansas.

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(c) L990, The Boston Globe, July 23, 1990

In US Senate primaries, North Carolina Democrats chose progressive Gantt
while Kentucky Democrats picked liberal Harvey Sloane to take on conservative
Sen. Mitch McConnell.

their prirnary race successes stem partly from white conservatives being
scared away from the Democratic Party by blacks, feminists and other new forces.
Exit polls during the l-988 presidential primary found that just l-5 percent of
voteri calling themselves conservatj-ves also said they were Democrats. That
exodus has continued this year, making it easier for Dernocrats to pick liberal
candidates, said B1ack, the Emory professor.

Liberal issues also have come of age here. The rrprochoicerr rallying cry was a
popular one for Democratic nominees, along with support for education, health
care and social causes that might paint one a moderate in the Northeast but that
are considered left-wing here. The liberals also benefited when a crumbling East
bloc deprived conservatives of their appeal to anticommunism, although many
1iberals, bowing to political reality, endorsed the death penalty and avoided
mentioning taxes.

The challenge now, Black said, ttis for progressive nominees to attract enough
support to get 50 percent of the vote in the general election."
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young, a black who served two terms as mayor of Atlanta, won enough votes to
rnake the runoff . But he trailed Lt. Gov. Zel-l Mi11er, hlho is white, by 12
percent, and is given tittle chance in the runoff. Black nominees for governor
of South Carolina and 1i-eutenant governor of Arkansas are even longer shots; the
black nominee for US Senate in North Carolina faces an uphill battle; and while
the South has 4 tg55 black officeholders, 90 percent represent districts with
black majorities.

When Virginia,s Douglas Wilder became the nation's first elected black
governor last year, it seemed l-ike a harbinger of a revolution. Now, Wilder
looks more and more like the exception that proves the rule of persistent racial
barri-ers at Dixie voting booths.

But Georgia Democrats did break with the past in castinq 70 percent of their
votes for the two most l-iberal candidates for governor, Young and Mi11er. That
follows victories by Iiberal Democrats in gubernatorial primaries in South
Carolina, Alabama, Texas and Arkansas, alonq with US Senate primaries in North
Carolina and KentuckY.

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(c) l-990, The Boston Globe, JuIy 23, 1990

If those candidates win in November, political analysts sdY, i-t could reshape
politics in the South and across the nation.

ttThere has been a sea changre in Southern politics. The conservative Democrat
is a dying breed,tf said Mer1e Black, a professor of politics at Emory
University.

As for the growing numbers of blacks running in distri-cts that are mostly
white, he said, 'rthe name of the game is to nobilize black voters and get a
large enough share of whites to win. The Georgia primary shows that's very
tough. rr

To see what blacks are up against, consider Young's recent campaign: The
former UN amhassador trooped through the Georgia outback, courting pecan and
tobacco farmers, loggers, miII workers and other rural voters. And he shifted
stands on several issues key to conservatives, 5-ncluding the death penalty,
saying that trthe state has a right to put mad dogs to death. rr

Even so, Young attracted only about 15 percent of the white vote, far less
than the 30 percent he needs to beat Miller in the runoff. And he failed to
enerqize bl-acksi many stayed horne and 1O percent of those who voted chose
Mi1Ier.
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(c) L990, The Boston G1obe, July 23, 1990

ttHe took the black cornmunity for grrantedrtr said Tyrone Brooks, a black
legislator from Atlanta.

If blacks resented Young's shift to the right, rural whites continued to see
him as tra little to the left of Abbie Hoffman," said Claibourne Darden, a
political consultant in Atlanta. ttPeople in the rest of the state are afraid of
Atlantars 12-1ane expresshrays and the Red Dog squad of police they see runningl
crack raids in bl-ack housing projects.rr

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