Greensboro News & Record
November 10, 2003
By Eric Dyer
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Black North Carolinians helped to start U.S. Sen. John Edwards' political career, and he asked them Sunday to assist him once again by spreading his presidential campaign message to voters in early Democratic primary states.
"You put me in the Senate," the White House contender told several hundred people who gathered at a downtown Raleigh hotel for a rally sponsored by the North Carolina African Americans for Edwards Committee. "Together, we've done a lot of good over the last five years. But we have so much good left to do."
Edwards' 1998 election to Congress demonstrated the power of black turnout in Southern elections. African Americans counted for one in five North Carolina ballots cast that day, and the former trial lawyer picked up
90 percent of them to edge out his Republican opponent.
Looking toward the 2004 elections, Edwards is pressed to win the South Carolina nominating primary for his candidacy to have any chance of surviving. That means earning the support of many black voters, since they could account for as much as half of the people casting ballots in that state's Feb. 3 Democratic primary.
Like others seeking the nomination, Edwards makes overt pitches to African Americans while in South Carolina. He has visited the nation's first school for freed slaves on St. Helena Island and attended worship services at predominantly black churches.
His campaign is planning to ramp up its efforts. One initiative to begin next month will be to send buses filled with African Americans from North Carolina into the Palmetto State so they can stump for Edwards.
"We're the base. We are the rock," Edwards' deputy campaign manager Craig Kirby said at the rally. "We need to inform our family. We need to inform our friends about John Edwards."
Kirby also urged black supporters to work in other early nominating states such as Michigan, Virginia, Georgia and Maryland, where, according to a campaign news release, African Americans will "make up significant percentages of Democratic primary voters."
David Bositis, senior analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington, said none of the nine Democratic presidential candidates - even the two candidates who themselves are black - has a clear edge with African Americans.
The fact that members of the Congressional Black Caucus are split in their endorsements is a sign, Bositis said. As examples, Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. backs former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, New York Rep. Charles Rangel sides with retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark and Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, among several others, goes for Edwards.
In this election, the candidates' issue positions are not the main concern for black voters, Bositis said.
"They are looking for someone they can trust and relate to," he said in an interview last week. "That was (Bill) Clinton's great gift to African Americans. And they want somebody who can beat George Bush. The issues, they figure, if they get a Democrat elected, will work out themselves."
Edwards has been leading in most South Carolina opinion polls taken since summer. However, one survey several weeks ago had Clark, an Arkansas resident, out front.
Edwards' success may have factored into a TV commercial that ran last week in South Carolina criticizing him for opposing the nomination of California Supreme Court justice Janice Rogers Brown to the federal bench in the District of Columbia. She is African American.
"Shame on you Senator Edwards," the announcer says in the half- minute spot from the Committee for Justice, an interest group fighting for Bush administration judicial nominees.
Edwards' campaign responded with a statement that said confirming Brown would result in "a step backwards on civil rights." The senator did not mention her by name at the rally in Raleigh but reiterated his staple stump line about the need to "fight for judges who will fight for our civil rights laws."
Besides a speech from Edwards, the event also featured the Shaw University choir and brief remarks from two African American elected officials, state Auditor Ralph Campbell and Durham Mayor Bill Bell. Other black and white Democratic politicians, including former state House Speaker Dan Blue and 2004 Senate candidate Erskine Bowles, attended.
Among those heeding the call for campaign volunteers was Cathy Hall, a retired teacher from Wake Forest. She said she signed up to lists offering to send out brochures and even travel to key primary states to assist Edwards' bid to get to the Oval Office.
I'll do whatever I can," Hall said. "I have tremendous respect for him. I think he's tops."