What Can Black Voters Expect in ‘08?
Filed Thursday, August 2, 2007 at 12:00 PM
With the show of support for the state’s newest Democratic elected official, former Republican State Senator Chris Koster — who’s also jumping in the field of Democratic candidates for Attorney General — the following question deserves to be asked: What kind of treatment can the party’s most loyal block of voters expect in 2008?
Will the Missouri Democratic Party ask its strong African-American base to support yet another statewide ticket with not a single black candidate, but one anchored by a candidate for Governor with a long and controversial history on issues most sensitive to the black community and a candidate for Attorney General who will have been a Democrat only slightly longer than it takes for a Missouri girl to go from an abstinence-only education to the host of an unwanted pregnancy to a single mom with no health care coverage?
In an environment with some supporters of a certain white male Democratic Presidential candidate saying that it would be bad for the party for Jay Nixon to have to campaign in the state’s more conservative counties with Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton at the top of the ballot, what will the Dems offer its strongest, most loyal block of voters — or rather, what should black elected officials demand of the party they fuel?
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