A Hoosier Precedent for Voters Transcending Race - Fran Quigley

[Vinnie From Indy]

After the late Julia Carson was first elected to Congress in 1996, I was privileged to serve as her chief of staff. During one of our first trips to Washington together, a Capitol Hill veteran took a look at the new representative from what was then Indiana’s Tenth Congressional District and pulled me aside. “I didn’t know Andy Jacobs represented a majority black district,” he whispered.

Of course, he didn’t, and she didn’t. The congressional district which encompassed most of Indianapolis was then over 70% white. But it was nearly unprecedented for such a voter demographic to send an African American to Congress. This guy in Washington knew his politics, and he knew that race has historically had a huge impact on elections.

So did Jacobs. “How can an African woman be elected to Congress from a 70% European district?” the former Congressman repeated in a conversation last week. “In candor, I didn’t know that she could. But I was duty bound to support the best person, and she was certainly that.”

The effect of race on voting is Topic A these days, with Barack Obama holding a slim but clear lead in the polls. The Bush administration is taking most of the public blame for the dismal economy, and Obama is out-performing John McCain in the eyes of undecided voters viewing the debates. Obama appears poised to become the 44th President of the United States.

Unless racism defeats him.

The potential stealth effect of race on voting is sometimes referred to as “the Bradley effect.” The term refers to the 1982 race for governor of California, when polls showing African American candidate and Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley with a healthy lead were refuted by a Bradley defeat on election day. Some say the polling-versus-voting discrepancy has been shown in other races with African American candidates. Whites won’t admit it to pollsters, the theory goes, but in the anonymity of the voting booth, conscious or sub-conscious prejudice makes many whites unlikely to vote for a non-white candidate.

The validity of the “Bradley effect” is hotly debated. But the persistent effects of race in U.S. society is a given. A Stanford University/Associated Press/Yahoo News study from this summer showed that one-third of white Democrats held some negative views of African Americans, and that Obama’s support might be as much as six percentage points higher if he were white.

In part, race may also work in Obama’s favor. He is likely to receive almost unanimous support from African Americans, and many whites are attracted to the idea that electing an African American to our highest office will help reverse America’s ugly legacy of racism.

The sheer number of white voters hurt by the depressed economy should work to Obama’s advantage, too. As one labor leader reportedly told white workers: You can vote your prejudice, or you can vote your pocketbook.

But for worried Obama supporters still seeking reassuring precedent, Indiana’s own “Carson effect” serves as a counter-theory to the “Bradley effect.” Carson routinely earned far better results on election days than the polls projected.

That included her very first Congressional contest in the 1996 Democratic primary, when Carson won a convincing victory over her opponents and the notion that Hoosier whites would not vote for an African American. “It was such a joy to realize that we lived through and beyond it,” Jacobs recalls.

Jacobs, whose longtime vocal opposition to the war in Iraq and to risking Social Security in the stock market looks mighty prescient these days, is an Obama supporter. Jacobs not only agrees with Obama on most of the key issues, he would like to once again see evidence that voters will transcend race—this time on democracy’s biggest stage. “I would so desperately savor striking this off the list of stupidities in my society,” he says.



Quigley is an attorney and director of operations for the Indiana-Kenya Partnership and former head of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union.

A link to The Indianapolis Star version of this column: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081020/OPINION12/810200319/1002/OPINION