Election tests how much race matters

Election te= sts how much race matters

= ;

Updated 11/1/2006 10:37 AM ET

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If Democrat Deval Patrick wins next week, he would be Massachusetts' first black gov= ernor. If Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey wins, she would be the first woman elected governor of the state.

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By Susan Page, USA TODAY

NEWTON, Mas= s. — When Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deval Patrick addressed members of the local Chamber of Commerce, he talked about stimulating the state's economy, streamlining regulations and improving public education.=

And race? The subject didn't come up.

Patrick, who is African-American, and members of the audienc= e, almost all of them white, insist color isn't a factor in this campaign. "I don't even see him as black," says Mike Hurley, 54, owner of= the local Minuteman Press franchise. He jokes, "It looks like to me that= he has a deep tan."

POLL: GOP outreach to African-American voters seems likely to be spurned

Colorblind electorate or not, Patrick is likely to make hist= ory next week. The political neophyte, who led Republican Lt. Gov. Kerry Heal= ey by 25 percentage points in a Boston Globe poll taken Oct. 22-25, is poised to become the first black governor of Massachusetts and only the second bl= ack ever elected governor in any state.

He is one of a new generation of African-American politicians who are changing old assumptions about what offices black candidates can = win.

Unlike senior black members of Congress, they are too young = to have joined the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. They often haven't g= one to historically black colleges or launched careers at black churches. Instead, many graduated from Ivy League colleges and pursued careers at b= ig law firms. They often advocate pragmatism over ideology and aspire — like white politicians — to the most powerful elected offices in the country.

"African-Americans are now able to come through the political pipelines and break through old barriers," says Donna Brazile, a top Democratic strategist. "Whether= they make it to the finish line is another thing, but the door has been left ajar."

In congressional elections next Tuesday, Memphis Rep. Harold Ford Jr. would be the first black senator popularly elected from the Sout= h if he prevails in a tossup contest for the Tennessee Senate seat. Maryland L= t. Gov. Michael Steele is in a competitive contest for the Senate. Keith Ellison, who is black and Muslim, is favored to win a 70% white congressi= onal district in Minneapolis. Angie Paccione, whose mother is black, is in a close contest to represent an 80% white district in Colorado.

A record six African-Americans hold major-party nominations = this year for senator and governor — three Republicans, three Democrats — and another 10 are running for such statewide offices as lieutena= nt governor and secretary of State that often provide steppingstones to high= er office.

To win, these candidates have to appeal to white voters, of course — and in a nation where race continues to resonate.

Ads against Patrick and Ford in recent weeks used "subt= le and not-so-subtle" racial appeals, says political scientist Kerry Haynie of Duke. Skeptics, among them political scie= ntist Ronald Walters of the University of Maryland, note that 1989 also was proclaimed a breakthrough year, when Douglas Wilder of Virginia became the first black ever elected governor — only to have 17 years pass with= out a second.

Still, David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies says he's seen a "co-evolution" by black candidates in shaping broad appeals and by white voters in being open to hearing them. =

African-American candidates who lose next week will have been undone not by their race but by the same challenges that defeat white contenders, Bositis says. <= /p>

Republican Ken Blackwell is running for governor in a year t= he Ohio GOP has been tainted by scandal, for instance, and Lynn Swann faces a formidable opponent in Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.

"A lot of young kids are getting beyond race in a lot of ways — I say 'getting,' not 'got,' but 'getting,' " says Bill Perry, a middle-age high school teacher attending a rally for Patrick at = the DCU Center Arena in Worcester, Mass. "It's just like my generation g= ot beyond 'Are you Irish?' or 'Are you French?' That was our grandparents.&q= uot;

Thousands of people jam the arena, waiting for the chance to= see Patrick and former president Bill Clinton. They wave small American flags= and — at the urging of the emcee — use their cellphones to create a sort of instant phone bank, calling friends and urging them to vote.

"You ready to win?" Patrick asks to cheers when he comes on stage with his wife, Diane. Even at a rally, Patrick has a low-k= ey, conversational style. He's given to on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand expositions on policy reminiscent of Clinton, his onetime boss and political patron.

"It's a pretty heady thing for a kid from the South Sid= e of Chicago to have a president stump for you," Patrick tells the audien= ce. While he's become accustomed to meeting with power brokers in the penthou= ses of skyscrapers, he says, "What's also wonderful is when the cleaning crew stops you in the lobby and says, 'I'm for you.' "

Patrick, 50, has lived in both worlds. He and his sister were raised by a single mother in one of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods, living on welfare for a time. A teacher recommend= ed him for a program called A Better Chance, which awarded him a scholarship= to attend Milton Academy, a tony prep school south of Boston.

It was, he recalls, "like coming to a different planet." He thrived at the private boarding school, graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School, then worked for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. = That's when he met Clinton, then governor of Arkansas. Later, as president, Clinton= appointed Patrick assistant attorney general for civil rights.=

Campaigning at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Patrick doesn't mention those jobs or his credentials on civil rights. Instead, he notes that he worked in senior posts at Texaco — chairing a task fo= rce appointed after the company lost a major race-discrimination lawsuit R= 12; and at Coca-Cola. That gives him the background to effectively manage sta= te government, he tells the audience, many of them small-business owners.

"I bring a range of leadership experience in government= , in business, in non-profits, in community groups that's broader than any oth= er candidate in the race," Patrick says in an interview with USA T= ODAY. His skin color hasn't been an issue "because I'm not offering to be = the first black governor of Mas= sachusetts," he says. He's appealing to "all kinds of people from all corners of = the commonwealth."

His opponent, Kerry Healey, 46, agrees that race hasn't been= a significant factor — perhaps, she says, because her election also w= ould represent a political breakthrough. She would be the first woman elected governor in Massachusetts. "That almost takes that all off the table," she says in an interview.

But Healey injected race with two TV ads in recent weeks, according to David Paleologos, director of th= e Suffolk University Politi= cal Research Center. One ad took Patrick to task for writing two letters and contributing $5,0= 00 to a campaign to win parole for a rapist, Benjamin L= aGuer, a black man who proclaimed his innocence. Even after new DNA testing prov= ed LaGuer's guilt, the ad shows Patrick calling him "thoughtful."

The second ad shows a white woman being stalked as she walks= in a parking garage at night. Depicting Patrick as soft on crime, the announ= cer declares: "He should be ashamed — not governor."

Healey says the ads raise legitimate questions about Patrick= 's judgment in supporting LaGuer and the veracit= y of his initial explanations about what he had done.

Patrick sees a racial message. "There were a lot of rea= sons why people equated those ads with the Willie Horton ad," he says, a reference to a spot aired against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race that showed a glowering black man who committed violent crimes while= on parole.

Suffolk<= /st1:PlaceName> University surveys showed Healey's attacks on crime initially narrowed Patrick's lead from 21 percentage points in early October to 13 points in the middle of the mont= h. By the end of the month, however, they had backfired, Paleologos says. Patrick's lead rebounded to 27 points.

Patrick, who has never run for office before, seems poised f= or a resounding victory in a state where 6.8% of the population is black, half= the U.S. average. He crushed two better-known white candidates in September's Democratic primary. Now the = Suffolk survey shows him leading among every demographic group except Republicans= .

Doug Wilder says Patrick shouldn't put too much stock in the findings. In his Virginia campaign, surveys of voters as they left polling places showed him ahead = by a comfortable 10 percentage points.

When the votes were counted, he won by just half a point.

Wilder, now the mayor of Richmond, related that cautionary tale to Patrick strategist= s at a political fundraiser in Was= hington last month. He says "there's no empirical data" to prove that w= hite voters today are any less likely to lie to pollsters about their willingn= ess to vote for black candidates.

"There remains a non-trivial faction of white voters who will not vote for a candidate simply because (the candidate is) black,&qu= ot; says Vincent Hutchings, a University of Michigan polit= ical scientist who is co-authoring a book called Wedge Politics. "= We are kidding ourselves if we argue these people have disappeared from the = landscape."

This year's contests will test whether African-Americans who advocate broad political agendas to mostly white electorates can win, he says. Haynie says their prospects are boosted= by such high-profile black officials as Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, t= he current and former secretary of State, who have "helped pave the way."

To the White House?

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama roiled calculations about the 2008 presidenti= al contest when he suggested last month he might jump in. And Patrick declin= es to rule out higher ambitions. "I'm not making any plans for national office," he says. But he also notes, "Life is what happens while you're making plans."

Six African-Americans on the ballot

A record six African-Americans have major-party Senate and gubernatorial nominations this year. A look at who they are and how their contests are rated by the non-partisan Cook Political Report:=



Candidate	Ken Blackwell	<= b>Deval Patrick=	Lynn Swann	Erik Fleming	Harold Ford, Jr.	Michael Steele

Party	Republican	Democrat	Republican	Democrat	Democrat	Republican

State	Ohio	Massachusetts	Pennsylvania	Mississippi	Tennessee	Maryland

Office	Governor	Governor	Governor	Senate	Senate	Senate

Opponent	Ted Strickland	Kerry Healey	Ed Rendell	Trent Lott	Bob Corker	Ben Cardin

Rating	Likely Democrat	Leans Democrat	Likely Democrat	Solid Republican	Tossup	Tossup