When you suspect someone you love, cherish and admire is ill, really ill, you hope against hope, praying that God’s blessings will shine upon them. But when the word you dread comes, reminding us that we can’t defeat God’s will and plan, it’s still a blow.
That’s how I felt when Julia Carson confirmed what many had suspected for a long time. That her illness had moved to a tragic, terminal stage.
The congresswoman who beat heart disease and used it to educate us, especially African-American women, is fighting her final health battle — this time against lung cancer.
I suspected Julia knew more than she was letting on when I interviewed her Nov. 5. I was in a private room at Methodist Hospital with a skyline view of the Indianapolis Julia has served so faithfully for decades. The interview was supposed to be at Julia’s house, but her doctor had delayed her release until that afternoon. So she insisted I come to the hospital.
I kept the interview location secret, one, because Methodist officials didn’t know I’d snuck in with a microphone; and two, because I believe in respecting federal medical privacy laws. But since Julia’s publicly revealed her condition, I can now reveal our interview location.
As I wrote two weeks ago, Julia’s mind was alert and sharp. That’s the scourge of lung cancer. It saps your body’s strength while your mind remains active and keen.
When I asked when she would decide about “next year,” meaning her re-election, she smiled, her eyes twinkled and softly said, “When I get to the point where I come to the end of my road. And I talk to the Lord about what am I going to do now. I think he’ll show me the answers.”
Now that he has shown her his answer, as Julia wrestles with God over the time she has remaining, our community must dry our moist eyes and get busy with the work at hand.
Julia Carson wouldn’t want our African-American community holding a pity-party for her. She would want us to continue to fight for the issues she fought for.
Those wanting to succeed her must start working now gathering community support, getting their federal paperwork together, and raising the volunteers and dollars for what will be a grueling, complex campaign.
And our African-American community must evaluate Julia’s potential successors against a standard of how well they follow the path Congresswoman Julia Carson blazed.
I come back to a phrase Julia said, “end of the road.” In his song “End of the Road,” Indy’s own “Babyface” expresses how our community feels about our Julia, at this difficult hour for her; and for our community.
“Babyface” wrote, “Although we’ve come to the end of the road/Still I can’t let you go/It’s unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you.”
Our African-American community owes it to Julia not to let the finality of her illness mean the end of our road to progress. Julia would want us to be ready and registered to continue the race she started.
May God’s grace continue to shine upon our congresswoman.
What I’m hearing in the streets
Before our new mayor starts controlling the Metro Police and cutting government services, he’d better note that his election wasn’t a mandate.
November’s election was among the closest in modern Indianapolis history. In margin of victory, 3.3 percent, it was the closest ever. In actual vote margin — 5,312 — it was second closest.
Ballard’s 50.4 percent of the vote was the second smallest winning percentage for any mayor since 1951. The 83,238 votes he received was the second lowest received by a winning Republican candidate since UniGov’s creation in 1970.
The closest mayoral election in modern times occurred in 1963, when Democrat John Barton beat Republican Clarence Drayer and independent Samuel Unger with 48.1 percent of the vote.
Looking back at 15 mayors’ elections going back 56 years, I was struck by how few were “close elections.” Most times, the winner won by tens of thousands of votes.
Winning by just 3 percent or 5,312 votes isn’t a mandate, especially in a city of nearly 900,000. The election showed how divided Indianapolis is. Mayor-elect Greg Ballard doesn’t have a broad mandate to ram his agenda down an evenly divided city’s throat.
While he’s at Harvard with other new mayors, I hope Ballard learns the importance of reaching common ground.
Meanwhile, at his first press conference as mayor-elect, I asked Ballard “if he would have his major appointments, the ones needing council confirmation, done by New Year’s Day.”
Ballard surprisingly said “No,” saying current Peterson administration department heads or deputies might be asked to stay on.
It’s unrealistic top Peterson appointees would stay after Dick Clark says it’s midnight. Ballard’s answer was a sign of how much he has to do, in so little time.
Before Julia Carson’s stunning announcement, state Rep. Jon Elrod, who became a state representative last year by an eight-vote margin, now wants Julia’s seat. But when I asked him where he stood on a major campaign issue — Iraq — Elrod lamely said he “still is studying the issue.”
Virtually every American has an opinion on Iraq, including every Republican (and Democratic) candidate for president and Congress. Elrod’s naivete on one of the 2008 campaign’s defining issues is stunning. Elrod’s gonna have to be much better prepared if he expects this district to take his campaign seriously.
The maligned political pollster Dr. Ann Selzer is back with new polls showing Gov. Mitch Daniels in deep trouble. But, the surprise in Selzer’s latest Indianapolis Star/WTHR/Channel 13 poll is that after condemning me for daring to criticize her polling methods, Selzer’s adopted one of my recommendations.
Nearly four years ago, in a meeting with WTHR’s news director, top Star editors and Selzer, I told her that the solution to her chronic undersampling of Blacks was statistically weighting the Blacks sampled to reflect the actual percentage of Blacks in Indiana. Statistical weighting is a valid statistical procedure used by numerous top research and polling companies.
“I don’t believe in weighting, it’s not valid,” Selzer coldly said.
Selzer’s now’s had a Damascus Road conversion on statistical weighting, as her latest polls were weighted “to reflect the 8 percent of the Hoosier population who are 18 and older and Black, based on Census estimates from the 2006 American Community Survey.”
See ‘ya next week.
Amos Brown’s opinions are not necessarily those of the Indianapolis Recorder Newspaper. You can contact him at (317) 221-0915 or e-mail him at ACBROWN@AOL.COM.
