From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
Black women form backbone of Democratic Party support
By GAYLE WHITE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/14/04
Janice Liddell could be describing a romance when she talks about her relationship with the ballot box and the Democratic Party.
_
At first she resisted getting involved. When she finally relented, she was filled with excitement and passion. Now, 28 years later, she is committed and comfortable.
_
A self-described "radical" who tried to dress the part with a big Afro and a lot of fringed suede, Liddell, 55, spent her college years on the edges of the Black Panther movement. She didn't trust the political system, and she never voted.
_
That changed in 1976, when her father, a Toledo, Ohio, barber who had marched on Washington with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., told her he believed in a candidate named Jimmy Carter. She cast her first ballot that year in Ann Arbor, Mich., where she was a graduate student. She remembers thinking, "My vote is going to help elect the president."
_
She hasn't missed a chance to vote for a Democrat since — a pattern that places her, along with her African-American sisters, at the core of the party's constituency. Studies of voting patterns show that black women are the most loyal Democrats of any demographic group.
_
"I think what the Democrats represent is much more in keeping with what black folks want in this country," said Liddell, a playwright and director of the center for faculty development at Clark Atlanta University.
_
Mary Parker, 76, a retired cafeteria worker in Reynolds, a town surrounded by cotton fields in rural Middle Georgia, puts it more plainly: "It looks to me like the Democrats always treat colored people better than the Republicans."
_
Their enthusiasm — and that of other black women — for the party nominee could determine the next occupant of the Oval Office.
_
In Georgia's 2000 Democratic presidential primary, 31 percent of the voters were black women — the highest percentage of any group. And in the 2000 general election, 94 percent of African-American female voters — regardless of age, geography or economic status — voted for Al Gore, according to an analysis by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington-based African-American think tank.
_
Difference makers
_
In some important states, African-American women made the difference for the Democrats in 2000, said Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, an author, political consultant and former deputy mayor of Philadelphia. In Illinois, the white vote split almost evenly between Gore and George W. Bush, she said, but the 10 percent of voters who were black women pushed Gore over the top with 54 percent.
_
Black women not only tend to vote Democratic, but those who are the organizers in their churches and neighborhoods also volunteer in voter registration drives, pass out campaign literature and get people to the polls on Election Day.
_
That means they can deliver not only their own votes, but those of others.
_
"The challenge to the Democratic Party," said Scruggs-Leftwich, "is to keep these women committed."
_
Republicans say they would like to attract more African-American women, adding to their rolls and chipping away at the Democratic base. They are slowly making inroads, said Scott Rials, executive director of the Georgia GOP.
_
Black women "have the same problems as everybody else," he said. "You have to appeal to them around the kitchen table, through issues like jobs, health care and education. You have to have a total package."
_
Doug Heyl, an Atlanta-based Democratic political consultant, agrees that real-life issues are the way to black women's votes. He, of course, thinks Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and runner-up Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina are better equipped to meet their needs than President Bush.
_
"African-American women are looking for candidates who understand everyday people's lives," he said. "A campaign's job is to say, 'I understand your lives, your hopes, your dreams.' I think the Kerry and Edwards campaigns are doing that effectively."
_
Joyce Turner, 45, a computer instructor at DeKalb Technical College, said she'd be looking at how candidates address health care and education before casting her vote in Georgia's March 2 presidential primary.
_
She's a Chicago native and lifelong Democrat who says she thinks Democrats are more attuned to the needs of women and families than Republicans.
_
"I have children," she said. "When I vote, I'm not just voting for myself. I'm voting for their future."
_
Demographics of the black community affect both turnout and voter agendas, said David Bositis, a researcher with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
_
One reason for higher participation among black women than black men is that a greater percentage of black men — more than 20 percent in some Southern states — are convicted felons and have lost their right to vote, he said. His claim is supported by a 1998 study by the Sentencing Project, an advocacy organization for prisoners' rights, and Human Rights Watch, an organization that monitors human rights internationally.
_
The high percentage of single women raising children makes issues such as child care more critical, he said.
_
"People talk about the Democrats being the Mommy Party and the Republicans being the Daddy Party," he said. "The Democratic Party does emphasize domestic issues such as health care, education and child care. Those are issues that women are more concerned about than men."
_
Young aren't so loyal
_
Some of the commitment to the Democrats is historical. African-American voters, once loyal to the party of Lincoln, began favoring Democrats during Franklin D. Roosevelt's administrations. That trend was reinforced when Democrats pushed through civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
_
Marianne Clarke, 64, an Atlanta media consultant and retired Columbia University professor, recalls casting her first vote for John F. Kennedy.
_
"I was awed with Kennedy and with Jackie," she said. "He brought in a whole new generation of voters."
_
Hattye Brown, 83, a retired teacher and school administrator in Taylor County, recalls hearing about poll taxes and literacy tests that kept many African-Americans from voting. She's passionate about voting and about encouraging others to vote.
_
"I always like to vote for the Democrat," she said. "I don't think anybody could change my mind."
_
Younger black women may not be so loyal. The civil rights movement seems long past to young women who are doing well professionally and financially.
_
"There definitely is emerging a more independent mind-set among young black women," said Felicia Davis of Jonesboro, a member of the advisory board of the Black Women's Roundtable, a national project that encourages participation in the political process.
_
Images of Condoleezza Rice, a black woman who serves as national security adviser to a Republican president, don't "go past young black women," she said.
_
Davis describes herself as a "progressive Republican" but said she voted "very much as an independent." She is raising a very active and independent-minded daughter who started a club called Future Voters of America.
_
"From what I've heard, African-American women feel as if the Republican Party is a lot of white men," said Mary Wilhite, 44, of Canton, who was raised by Democrats in Chicago but is a Republican. "That's not what I've experienced. I've had the opportunity to be heard."
_
Wilhite, who coordinates a faith-based community development organization, said she thought African-American women — who she said had "been led down the Democratic road for so long" — were becoming more open to alternatives.
_
Scruggs-Leftwich, a Democratic voter whose mother was secretary of the New York State Republican Convention, said, "It's almost as if the pendulum is swinging back."
_
Older women are remaining with the Democratic Party, she said, "but I am not seeing their ranks being backfilled by young African-American women. ._._. Many of them are identifying themselves as independent."
_
Shon Payton, 30, a DeKalb County state employee, said she based her vote on the candidate, not party affiliation. "Who is going to benefit me to have in office?" she asks.
_
Willie May Roberts, 30, a housekeeper and laundress at a Jonesboro nursing home, voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. She'll vote this year, but has not decided for whom.
_
"I always feel like my vote is the one that makes a difference," she said.
_
To boost their chances in November, Democrats need to lock in as many votes of black women as possible.
_
"What they need to do is hit on issues that speak to black women," said Jeremy Mayer, author of "Running on Race — Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns, 1960-2000." "We are such an evenly divided nation that if one side whips up its troops, it's going to be very hard to beat."
_
Find this article at:
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0204/15women.html