Word: blacking
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...Much of the campaign's current effort to get black voters to the polls rests with grass-roots organizers like John Wyche, 50, of Pensacola, Fla. Wyche says he made an innovative suggestion to Obama's Florida campaign staffers that they ask pastors of predominately black congregations in Escambia County - which includes Pensacola and allows early voting on Oct. 26 - to have buses and vans ready after morning services to take congregants to polling stations. But the Obama campaign won't comment on whether it will take Wyche's advice - nor will it comment generally on suggestions that...
...Meanwhile, other activists are taking similar steps. The NAACP has launched "Arrive With Five," a campaign encouraging its members to bring five friends to polling stations. In predominately black Cleveland, Basheer Jones, 23, is bringing voting-rights experts on his popular morning radio show to puncture the assumption that ex-felons can't vote. He is also promoting a rally and parties sponsored by black fraternities intended to get black Ohioans to vote early; the price of admission is a sticker proving that you voted. "We don't want anybody to have a reason to not vote," he says...
...some criticize the Obama campaign for failing to reach out enough to black voters, the GOP isn't taking advantage of the opening. In 2004, President Bush carried 11% of black voters nationally. After a GOP convention in which blacks accounted for just 36, or 1.5%, of the delegates - down from 6.7% four years ago - the Arizona Senator is not expected to capture more than 5% of the black vote. That could be fatal in states like Ohio, where Jones, the Cleveland radio host, observes, "I haven't seen any John McCain posters. None. He hasn't reached...
...Asked why Florida Republicans declined to buy ads in black newspapers promoting McCain's candidacy, Jim Greer, the group's chairman, said, "I prefer to look at what really reaches African-American voters, what gets them engaged, and I'm not sure advertising is always the answer. The answer is sitting down to talk with them." Last year, for instance, Florida Republicans held a leadership conference in Orlando that drew some 500 blacks. Nevertheless, Clarence McKee, a co-chair of African-Americans for McCain in Florida, says of his party, "They have to do more to reach out to black...
...just Obama's historic candidacy that's eroding the Republicans' small black constituency. Many black pastors who supported Bush cannot credibly suggest that their congregations support the Republican ticket, not after the Bush Administration's mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and the economic crisis that particularly threatens an already fragile black middle class. For many blacks, there is little evidence that McCain, who still has the stigma of initially opposing a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in his home state of Arizona two decades ago, has a desire to cultivate the kind of relationships with black Republicans that Ronald Reagan...