A dilemma for black Republicans?

On May 16, 2005, President George Bush visited New Kent County to tour a biodiesel refinery. One of the proud Republicans who spoke at that event was Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan.

Now Morgan is speaking out in a different role. He is a featured endorser on the web site of Democrat Mark R. Warner, who is running for the U.S. Senate.

It seems a funny thing happened on the way to the next election.

Morgan is African-American and considered himself a GOP moderate in the mold of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. But he gradually became disillusioned with the Republican Party and partisan politics in general.

He left the GOP earlier this year. Now an independent, he is keeping an open mind about the presidential race, where the Democrats plan to nominate a black man for the first time ever in Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is reaching out to moderates and independents.

When Morgan joined the GOP, he envisioned it as a party of the big tent where a "clash of ideas" would produce the best results.

"That's not what I ultimately saw," he said.

Instead, he said party affiliation created intense pressure to toe the partisan line, to act in ways that might go against a personal position. If that became routine, he feared waking up one morning and asking himself "Who am I?"

Morgan said the presidential race presents a tough choice. During our telephone interview, he was out in Indianapolis at the National Sheriff's Association conference. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, addressed the crowd and sounded all the right notes, Morgan said.

Specifically, McCain extolled the value of prisoner re-entry programs, where convicts are prepared to return to life on the street.

By the way, Morgan doesn't spare the Democrats. He plans to run for reelection as an independent.

"Both parties," he said, "are more interested in winning than pragmatic solutions."

Morgan's comments brought to mind a recent story from U.S. News and World Report about prominent black Republicans who remain uncommitted in this presidential race. Former Republican congressman J.C. Watts said he is torn -- not because Obama is black, but because he is disillusioned with the Republican Party. Watts is one of two black Republicans who has served in the House of Representatives since the 1930s, the story notes.

"African-American Republicans in the faith community are the most forgotten demographic in the Republican Party," he said.

Check out the story here.

And as always, feel free to weigh in.

Comments

[J. Tyler Ballance]

Since reconstruction the African-American vote has always be awarded to the highest bidder.

When the Republicans came to the South promising each former slave who could prove that they had not married one of their own family members, "forty acres and a mule" the Blacks thronged to the Party of Lincoln, which was by no coincidence, the Party offering the Blacks the money.

After the Johnson administration (1964) created the so called "great society" programs (race-based set asides and outright give-aways from the federal coffers), the Democrats became the new favorites of Black America.

The proposition is quite simple for today's Republicans. If the GOP wants the Black vote, they will have to out-bid the Democrats.

Unfortunately for the Black community, they have slipped out of the number one minority position, now behind Latinos, and will likely soon be number three behind Asians. Being number three and no longer the favorite pet minority of either national political party, will leave Blacks in a much weaker position to extort money from either the Republicans or Democrats.

The dilemma is not for Republicans to court or bribe Blacks to support the GOP, but how African Americans will achieve political relevance in the United States in the Twenty-First century.

The best advice for any citizen in these changing times in America, is to rigorously work withing the political party of your choice and help to recruit good, responsive candidates; folks who will ENHANCE our liberty, who will work for an America where advancement is based solely on MERIT and where we will have liberty and justice for all of our citizens.