PAC Spokesman: With Targeted Effort, GOP Can Get Black Vote
by Ed Thomas
June 15, 2005
(AgapePress) - An author of a new book examining voting politics says a strategy used by some Georgia businessmen during the last presidential election proved it is possible for the Republican Party to get more of the African-American vote.
Syndicated talk-show host and businessman Herman Cain has written a new book called They Think You're Stupid: Why Democrats Lost Your Vote and What Republicans Must Do to Keep It (Stroud & Hall, 2005). Cain says he was part of an effort by a group of black businessmen in Georgia who focused on black neighborhoods and cities with large black populations, using media in an attempt to solicit those communities' votes during the 2004 election.
That group of black Republican entrepreneurs, which calls itself Black America's Political Action Committee (BAMPAC), created media spots targeting black television and radio in certain communities and compared the values positions of both party platforms. The effort generated a noticeable response among voting age African Americans by focusing on issues that mattered to them.
Those issues were both fiscal and social, and included topics such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and tax reform. And as a result, while George Bush only took an average of 10 or 11 percent of the black vote nationally, that tally was doubled in some of the targeted African-American communities, Cain points out. And he notes, "We got as high as 18 percent of the black vote in some of these markets. Why? -- because we asked for the vote."
These results, the syndicated spokesman contends, disprove the notion long held by Republicans that they cannot get the black vote; they can, he says, because those in that bloc are becoming more diverse as well as more likely to vote on issues, rather than on the basis of tradition or empty political rhetoric.
"One of the big misperceptions that the Republicans and the Democrats make about the black vote," Cain says, "is that it is one homogenous block, and all you need is one good sound bite, and you're going to attract them all. No -- that's not true."
What is true, Cain says, is that more black voters today are taking the time to vote based on their deeply-held beliefs and concerns. For that reason, he maintains that targeted efforts to get more of the minority vote will pay off for the GOP.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
