Some readers probably had a double take after seeing the headlines showing African-American voters came out in strong numbers to help a White Republican win a Mississippi primary runoff.
But there is truth behind the headlines: Black Mississippians who might otherwise vote Democratic helped swing a primary vote toward six-term incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran by casting ballots in the state’s GOP primary.
African-American voters exercised voter savvy and a pragmatic strategy to help deliver a blow to the tea party movement on Tuesday by taking advantage of Mississippi’s open primary law to support Cochran. Cochran, an establishment conservative with more than 40 years congressional experience, narrowly defeated a challenge from state Sen. Chris McDaniel, thanks largely to the African-American vote.
The vote is seen as having historic significance.
“For the first time since President Richard M. Nixon’s divisive ‘Southern Strategy’ that sent Whites to the Republican Party and Blacks to the Democrats, [African-American] voters have come out in force for a Republican in the Deep South,” reported the New York Times.
The voters who handed Cochran his narrow victory over his tea party challenger were an amalgam of African-American Democrats, rural and suburban White Republicans, and union members.
They were put off by McDaniel’s divisive rhetoric and austere promises.
Let’s be clear, Cochran is no moderate and he is no champion of civil rights.
But many African-Americans appear to have decided to go with the conservative they know in Cochran rather than take a chance on McDaniel’s, who was overly vicious in his attacks on President Barack Obama and made what many viewed as a racial pitch to White voters when he said, “It’s time to defend our way of life again.”
African-Americans reasoned with a Democrat facing the difficult odds of winning in a statewide election in Mississippi and a Republican being the likely winner against the Democrat, they preferred Cochran.
Although some Cochran campaign officials are already downplaying the significance of the African-American voter in the election, they cannot deny that they reached out to the Black vote during the primary.
The facts show the African-American vote was a significant factor in the election.
African-American leaders texted, car-pooled and telephoned on Cochran’s behalf. It paid off. Blacks turned out in record numbers for a Mississippi Republican primary.
African-American voters in Mississippi used a politically savvy strategy that should be considered in other primaries across the nation.
(Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)
