In my opinion, the late Jack Cottey, Marion County’s last two term Republican Sheriff, was a difficult, strongly partisan man with plenty of faults. But, when it came to politics and understanding Indianapolis, Cottey was clairvoyant.
In an interview I did with him 15 years ago, Cottey, who died last week at age 75, understood how Indianapolis was changing. Reporting in the May 26, 2000 Indianapolis Recorder of an interview on my old Channel 53 TV show, Cottey said, “Many persons who used to vote straight Republican have moved to the suburban counties. Those replacing them are more moderate voters who vote Republican or Democrat.”
Cottey continued, “I know Blacks are moving from the inner city Center Township out into Pike, Lawrence, Warren and Wayne. The number of minorities is increasing in (the old Sheriff’s patrol areas). Our party must reach out to them.”
Cottey’s political wisdom seems to have been forgotten in this year’s election by the leaders of the state and local Republican Party. Regardless of the final result Tuesday, Republicans missed major opportunities to make inroads with African-American voters.
A couple of months after City-County Councilman Jose Evans became a Republican, an African-American big shot with the Republican National Committee visited Indy and met with a number of Black GOP party activists and key leaders of Indiana’s and Marion County’s Republican Parties.
The message? Republicans weren’t going to take African-American voters for granted. They were going to go aggressively after their support and votes.
I attended the off-the-record session and was impressed. Of course in politics, rhetoric doesn’t count. Actions and deeds do.
So, in August 2013 when Gov. Mike Pence chose an African-American, Dwayne Sawyer, as state auditor, I thought the GOP was getting serious about going after our community’s vote. Unfortunately, Sawyer’s promise imploded three months later.
In this election, the party’s statewide ticket has excluded any outreach to African-Americans. No advertising. No interviews.
So here we are a fortnight before the Nov. 4 election and Republican Party efforts to reach out to Blacks have been sloppy and inept.
It didn’t help that their party abandoned any effort to run candidates in Black-majority legislative districts. Of the county’s five Black-majority House districts, Republicans ran a candidate in only one – against Rep. Greg Porter in District 96.
The county GOP gave Vanessa Summers, Cherrish Pryor, Robin Shackleford and John Bartlett a pass. Not to be biased about it, the county Republicans also ran no candidates against white Reps. Justin Moed and Dan Foreman.
How can our community learn Republican alternatives to Democratic issues and positions if you abandon the race before it starts?
Marion County GOP Chair Kyle Walker, it doesn’t demonstrate your party’s vitality in our community if you can’t find candidates to run in Black-majority districts.
Boy, if the legendary Republican Marion County Chairs of the past like Keith Bulen and John Sweezy were around, they’d kick Kyle Walker into next week for sheer ineptitude for missing the opportunity.
When the Marion County Republican Party nominated three African-Americans for their countywide ticket – Terry Dove for recorder, Duane Merchant for prosecutor and Emmitt Carney for sheriff – I said maybe I should take the GOP’s effort at Black outreach seriously.
I’m not blaming Carney, Merchant and Dove. They’ve done their job as candidates making appearances and hitting all areas of the county trying to get the word out.
Their party let them down.
The party’s moneybags were shut when it came to Black candidates this year.
As of the Oct. 10 campaign-filing deadline, Duane Merchant had only raised $2,249. Terry Dove $4,985. The party’s bright hope, Emmitt Carney, had raised only $99,847.53. Compared to the $532,071.05 raised by incumbent Sheriff John Layton.
Cottey wouldn’t be surprised that what he told me 15 years ago about the Black migration to the townships has hit with a vengeance.
Fifty/sixty years ago, the rigid residential segregation that existed in many cities made it easy to ascertain how Blacks voted. Virtually all Blacks lived in high percentage Black majority neighborhoods and political precincts, so it was easy to measure the Black vote.
But the Black Diaspora in many cities away from the “inner city” to outer areas of cities and to suburbs has made it extraordinarily difficult for Democratic and Republicans political professionals (not to mention the news media) to really know how Blacks vote.
Population estimates from the 2013 Census American Community Survey document that a majority of our African-American community (55.3 percent) lives in the old township areas of the city.
More significant, from a political perspective, nearly half the Black community (49.6 percent) lives in a political precinct that’s not a Black-majority.
Using data from the partisan 2011 redrawing of the county’s precincts, only 9.8 percent of Black voters live in a precinct where Blacks are 90 percent or more majority; 9.6 percent live in a precinct that’s 80-90 percent Black; and only 5.4 percent live in a precinct that’s 70 percent to 80 percent Black.
As this election draws to a close, and the next two (2015 and 2016) begin, candidates, political consultants and leaders in both parties need to understand some basic facts about our African-American community that they forget at their peril.
There is a growing sense of independence among Black voters. They can be attracted to Republican candidates who don’t follow Tea Party rigid orthodoxy, who appreciate issues that the Black community is really concerned about.
The fact that nearly half of Black voters live in non-Black-majority areas; means the use of direct mail is a growing liability to reaching and motivating Black voters.
The metropolitan spread of our community means the use of Black media – Black radio and Black newspapers and publications – which reach far more of our community than any given TV newscast or the daily or Sunday newspaper – is best suited to reach a Black community with a metropolitan spread.
But the leadership of the state and local GOP must end their irrational phobia of Black media. Only then can they be seriously seen as reaching for our community’s votes.
See ‘ya next week!
You can email comments to Amos Brown at ac-brown@aol.com.
