At a rally on the campus to raise support for Senate candidate Ben Cardin last week, Kweisi Mfume, the one-time president of the NAACP who challenged Cardin in the primaries, made a keen observation about the state Democratic ticket for Congress.
Everybody running is white.
While Mfume went on to praise Cardin and give his support to the man who beat him by just 3 percent of the vote in the primaries, he made it clear that something needs to change, pointing out that this year’s ticket, which includes House minority whip Steny Hoyer and Senator Barbara Mikulski, has as much diversity as it did 50 years ago.
Mfume’s comments highlight an issue that has been gaining as much attention in the state elections as more prominent national priorities, bringing race not only to the forefront of the battle between Cardin and his Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, but in the gubernatorial and local elections as well.
“What he said was the truth,” David Paulson, a spokesman for the Maryland Democratic party, said, adding that the party will try to make changes in the future. “Race issues are very important, but they are issues, not just words.”
Paulson accuses of the Steele campaign of avoiding other issues, like the war in Iraq and healthcare, in favor of talking about the racial divide between Steele, who is black, and Cardin, who is white.
While Paulson said Republicans incorrectly tout themselves as champions of diversity, he admits that the winner of the race could come down to who wins the majority of black votes in the state. Calls to Steele’s campaign headquarters were not returned, but he has said in the past how important the black vote is.
“If it were a year not like this one I could see [black voters] losing interest,” said university professor Karen Kaufmann, who has done extensive research on the attitudes and political behavior of blacks and Latinos. “But this is not the year to sit it out … the stakes are high.”
Kaufmann said what makes the race between Steele and Cardin so interesting is the dynamics of how the race has developed and how the candidates have portrayed themselves and their opposition.
“Traditionally, black Republican members of Congress are very, very conservative,” she said. “Some of them are out of touch with the black community. Steele is really trying to paint himself as a moderate.”
And while the black community may have a lot invested in the Democratic party, she added, “there may be some residual resentment in the black community for Democrats not supporting Mfume,” which could cause the black vote to swing to the right-leaning Steele, or which could cause blacks to not vote at all.
Democrats may have tried to relieve a perceived resentment at last week’s rally in by bringing in Mfume and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), one of the most wildly popular members of the party and the Senate’s only black member to support Cardin.
Paulson countered that Obama was scheduled to attend the convention long before the winner of the primary was known, and Kaufmann questioned how much of an effect their appearance would have in bringing out the black vote.
“There’s an endorsement and then there’s campaigning for [someone] … I don’t know to what extent [Mfume’s] going to exert a lot of energy on Cardin’s behalf.”
Locally, elections have shown some influence of race as well. In District 21, which includes College Park and a large portion of Prince George’s County, Joseline Peña-Melnyk, who immigrated from the Dominican Republic, won a democratic nomination in September after running independently from primary winner Jim Rosapepe’s all-white slate.
She is the first minority to win a seat on the District 21 Democratic ticket in recent memory, and she scored a resounding victory in defeating incumbent Del. Brian Moe in the primary. But demographics have shifted in District 21 in recent years: The black population has nearly doubled and Hispanics in the area have increased by more than 80 percent. The total population increased by just 8.6 percent.
It is unclear whether those demographic shifts contributed to Peña-Melnyk’s primary win – she did not make race a central issue in her campaign and demographic statistics for local voters are not available – but the implications of such a dramatic shift are clear.
Peña-Melnyk did not return calls for comment for this story.
But Student Government Association senior vice president Kyle Carson, who is black, said it is irrelevant which candidate receives the black vote because none of them address the issues most important to the black community.
“A lot of minorities understand why crime happens, but people would rather talk about gay rights as opposed to who’s sending who to jail, who’s teaching who … it’s issues like that that would get the black voters out,” Carson said. “I believe this is a prime example of why we need more parties, or more representation; none of the candidates are much to speak of.”
Contact reporter Owen Praskievicz at praskieviczdbk@gmail.com.
