About one-fourth of voters in Michigan's Democratic caucuses Feb. 7 are expected to be African American. With that in mind, campaigns are scrambling to line up support among black voters and opinion makers in Michigan.
Dean, the former Vermont governor, recently won the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, a Detroit congresswoman. Her son, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, said after the Iowa caucuses that he was still leaning toward Dean.
But another key African-American mover in Michigan Democratic politics, businessman Joel Ferguson, who helped engineer civil rights activist Jesse Jackson's surprise 1988 Michigan caucus victory, is on U.S. Sen. John Kerry's team.
"I'm going to help Kerry win Michigan," he said Monday. Ferguson's daughter, Jennifer Ferguson, is Kerry's political director in Michigan.
Former Gov. James Blanchard, also a Kerry supporter, made cellphone pitches to potential Michigan donors over the weekend as he traveled with the campaign.
He said Monday that the Kerry campaign is gathering endorsements from black state legislators and influential black pastors, but that the Democratic candidates in general still have a long way to go to connect with black voters.
A large number of Detroit pastors had endorsed U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt before he withdrew from the race after his fourth-place finish in Iowa.
One question mark in Michigan was the Rev. Al Sharpton's potential appeal to black voters. But a poll released Monday showed he was attracting the support of only 3 percent of prospective caucus voters.
At a debate earlier this month, Sharpton put Dean on the spot when he asked why none of his top appointees when he was governor were black or Hispanic.
Michigan is not the only state with a big population of minority voters headed to the polls soon.
Black voters will account for about 40 percent of the Democratic turnout in the Feb. 3 South Carolina primary. Both Arizona and New Mexico have primaries Feb. 3, and 40 percent of the Democratic voters in those states are Hispanic.
But Michigan has added significance because it is both a swing state and a big electoral prize where the turnout of black voters will be crucial to any Democrat's chance to win the White House.
In 2000, when Democrat Al Gore beat George W. Bush in Michigan, the margin of victory for the Democrats came from predominantly black voters in Detroit.
| Get the rest of Patricia Montemurri's Detroit Free Press article "Black Michiganders to play pivotal role in Democrats' race" (via Juan Cole's Informed Comment)
posted in articles on January 28, 2004 12:37 AM | t (0)
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