Not Helping: How Some Republicans Are Hurting Black Voter Outreach Effort
GOP words and deeds that disrupt the party's diversity work.
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So Not Helping - A year has passed since the Republican Party vowed once again to broaden its tent. But while the national committee worked to build a minority voter outreach program in cities across the U.S., the locals seem to have not read the memo. Here is a growing list of incidents certain to make people of color consider the GOP, but perhaps not in the way chairman Reince Priebus is hoping. – Joyce Jones (@BETpolitichick)(Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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Whites Only? - South Dakota state Sen. Phil Jenkins thinks that businesses should have the option to not serve Blacks no matter the economic impact. “If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them,” Jensen told the Rapid City Journal. (Photo: Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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A Sticky Situation - Virginia state Sen. Frank Ruff doesn't like the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. But comparing reliance on promised funds to provide health insurance for thousands of low-income Virginians to a "tar baby" may be taking his opposition too far. He says he was referring to a "sticky situation," but most other people, particularly African-Americans, consider it to be a racial slur. (Photo: ouglas Graham/Roll Call/Getty Images)
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The Next Ted Cruz? - Mississippi senate candidate Chris McDaniel, who is challenging incumbent GOP Sen. Thad Cochran, delivered remarks at a neo-Confederate conference and costume ball in August. His hosts promote secession and say the wrong side won the "war of southern independence." (Photo: Courtesy Chris Mcdaniel for Senate)
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Rebel Yell - Michael Ashmore of Hooks, Texas, traveled to Washington to protest the closure of war memorials during the government shutdown. While in town, he took time to "visit" the White House to wave his discontent. (Photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
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Wheeler's Choice - A video has surfaced in which Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler told a Republican gathering that he would vote for slavery if his constituents wanted him to. "If that's what they wanted, I'd have to hold my nose.... they'd probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah," he said at a Storey County Republican Party meeting in August. (Photo: Courtesy Jim Wheeler)
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One of His Best Friends Is Black - "If it hurts the whites, so be it. If it hurts lazy Black people that want the government to give them everything, so be it," Don Yelton, a North Carolina county precinct chairman, said of his state's stricter voting laws in an interview on The Daily Show. He also used the N-word and was forced to resign his position the next day. (Photo: Courtesy The Daily Show)
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Still Racist - “When a n****r can use the word n****r and it not be considered racist, that’s the utmost racism in the world, and it’s hypocrisy,” Yelton told The Wrap after he was forced to step down. “There’s no political party that’s going to tell me what to say as long as I have breath in my body,” he added.(Photo: Courtesy The Daily Show)
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With Republicans Like Cruz - "We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during a Heritage Foundation lecture series named after the deceased segregationist and opponent of civil rights laws. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Yeah, He Said It - "Admit it. You want a white Republican president again. Now before you start feeling like you’re a racist, understand you are not. Wanting a white Republican president doesn’t make you racist, it just makes you American," Tea Party activist Kevin Jackson, who is Black, wrote on his blog The Black Sphere.(Photo: Kevin Jackson via Facebook)
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How He Really Feels - "I guess I really actually feel we shouldn't contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine," Doug Priesse, Franklin County, Ohioparty chairman and aide to Gov. John Kasich, told the Columbus Dispatch in an email, referring to reduced early-voting hours. (Photo: Courtesy Franklin County Republican Party)
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Apples and Oranges? - "If the poorest members of society can obtain photo ID to get taxpayer-funded handouts, they should be able to do likewise for voting. The real reason the left wants to make sure that individuals without voter ID are allowed to vote is because they are expected to vote for Democrats," wrote Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly in defense of North Carolina's new voting laws. (Photo: REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert)
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Winning? - "Tea Party Republicans should take comfort. Being called a racist by liberals is a badge of honor. It means our ideas are winning," Jeffrey T. Kuhner, a radio host on WRKO AM-680 in Boston, wrote in a Washington Times opinion piece. (Photo: Entercom Boston/WRKO Radio Boston)