How NOT To Get The Black Vote
on April 9th, 2010 at 6:56 am
Lee Hockstader of the Washington Post had this to say concerning Bob McDonnell, Republican governor of Virginia:
“What really seems to have opened the governor’s eyes was one person: Sheila Johnson. Johnson, the African-American co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, was a key backer — the key backer — of McDonnell’s campaign. Her support was so important to McDonnell that barely a day passed when he didn’t mention it, and she was featured front-and-center in his campaign advertising. Single-handedly, she conferred respectability on him not only as conciliatory on race, but as pro-business.
For a solid 24 hours, McDonnell and his aides defended and excused the first proclamation. But the wind suddenly went out of their defense shortly after Johnson issued the following damning statement Wednesday afternoon:
‘I must condemn Gov. McDonnell’s proclamation honoring ‘Confederate History Month’ and its insensitive disregard of Virginia’s complicated and painful history, the remnants of which many Virginians still wrestle with today,“ said Johnson, an African-American business owner.
‘The complete omission of slavery from an official government document, which purports to be a call for Virginians to ‘understand’ and ‘study’ their history, is both academically flawed and personally offensive. If Virginians are to celebrate their ‘shared history’ as this proclamation suggests, then the whole truth of this history must be recognized and not evaded.” (more…)
This has to go down as one of the most dumbest political moves.
You don’t win the governorship of a key state with a significant Black population and start playing “Dixie” just months after you won.
