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FinalCall.com News
National News
Minority voters flexing muscle after Cochran win?
By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press
Updated Jul 9, 2014 - 12:05:01 PM
WASHINGTON (AP)—Sen. Thad Cochran’s GOP primary victory, thanks in part to Black Mississippians who turned out to vote for him, exemplifies a new math that politicians of all persuasions may be forced to learn as this country’s voting population slowly changes complexion.
Mr. Cochran’s campaign courted Black voters, perceiving their unhappiness with his tea party-supported opponent, Chris McDaniel, and his anti-government rhetoric and scathing criticisms of President Barack Obama. Blacks responded by turning out to help give Sen. Cochran an almost 7,000-vote win. The use of Mississippi’s open primary to further their agenda showed political maturity by Black voters and debunked a longstanding belief that they obediently vote Democratic and not according to their own interests.
They turned out for a primary runoff with no Democratic candidate involved. And they voted Republican even though the smart play for the Democrats would have been to usher Mr. McDaniel to victory and create a more winnable contest for Democrat Travis Childers in November.
“I think that Thad Cochran is a shot across the bow to be felt for a long time,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was the first minority presidential candidate to win a statewide primary or caucus in 1984 and 1988. “You cannot win in the new South or win in national elections with all-White primaries. This is a new America today.”
Tests of this assertion are coming in July in Alabama and Georgia, also Southern states with large minority populations and open primaries. The Mississippi race may be a harbinger of more strategic voting for minority voters, especially Blacks, said D’Andra Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.
“This is not a one-time situation,” Prof. Orey said. “Blacks do recognize their power in the vote, and in this particular case, Blacks saw that they could actually defeat or be a strong influence ... in defeating McDaniel.”
In Mississippi, which is 38 percent Black and on track to become the country’s first majority-Black state, some Black voters said they planned to support Sen. Cochran, a six-term incumbent, again in November. Others said they would keep their options open in November or vote for the Democrat, even though they considered Sen. Cochran a better choice than Mr. McDaniel in the red state.
“I just think that McDaniel did as much for the Cochran turnout in the Black community as Cochran people did,” said Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s sole Black congressman.
Agitating minority voters may soon prove politically risky anywhere in the nation: the numbers of Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American voters are growing not only in presidential election years but in off-cycle elections as well, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
In presidential election years, the percentage of Black voters eclipsed the percentage of Whites for the first time in 2012, when 66.2 percent of Blacks voted, compared to 64.1 percent of non-Hispanics Whites and about 48 percent of Hispanics and Asians.
The number of Black and other minority voters has also been increasing during off-cycle, non-presidential elections. For example, in the 2010 congressional and statewide elections, 47.8 percent of non-Hispanic Whites, 40.7 percent of Blacks, 21.3 percent of Asians and 20.5 percent of Hispanics voted.
But the only groups to increase their numbers were Blacks and Hispanics, who voted at 38.6 percent and 19.3 percent respectively in 2006 congressional and statewide elections. The White and Asian participation rate dropped during that same time period from 50.5 percent and 21.8 percent.
