Columnist
If the last presidential election and the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito proved nothing else, they showed how certain issues – especially abortion rights and gay marriages – get pushed to the forefront while issues of true concern to most African Americans get relegated to the background.
That’s why I always look forward to the NAACP Report Card covering the most recent session of Congress. Like labor and other special interest groups, both liberal and conservative, the NAACP identifies issues of importance to African Americans and then grade members of the Senate and House, based on their level of support.
Not surprisingly, there is a major difference in how members of the two major parties vote.
For the most part, Democrats support the pro-civil rights agenda of the NAACP and Republicans, by and large, are hostile to civil rights. No Republican in either the House or Senate scored higher than a C. In fact, most earned Fs, including likely presidential candidates Senator John McCain of Arizona and Bill Frist of Tennessee. The so-called Republican moderates – Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine earned a C and a D, respectively.
Republican strategists who contend they want a larger share of the black vote are like umpires – they talk a good game, but they don’t play ball. Not with the majority of African Americans.
In many instances, the Report Card shows that most Republicans were not even close to making a D. In the Senate, Jeff Sessions of Alabama; McCain and Jon Kyl of Arizona; Charles Grassley of Iowa; Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts of Kansas; Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning of Kentucky; Thad Cochran and Trent Lott of Mississippi; Chuck Hagel of Nebraska; John Ensign of Nevada; Judd Gregg of New Hampshire; James Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma; James DeMint of South Carolina; Frist and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John Cornyn of Texas all voted right only 5 percent of the time. Of the 20 issues cited by the NAACP, they voted wrong 19 times.
The one issue they generally supported the NAACP on was reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Act. Most of them opposed the NAACP and supported the nominations of four far-right judges – Janice Rogers Brown, William H. Pryor, Priscilla Owen and John Roberts – voted against increased funding for AIDS, rejected additional funds for low-income home energy assistance, voted against a successful amendment that preserved $14 billion in Medicaid funding over five years and against a move to lift the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour over 26 months.
The entire Congressional delegations in six states – Alaska, Idaho, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Wyoming – earned Fs. If the A-votes of Bennie Thompson, the lone black member of the Mississippi delegation, were excluded, the Magnolia state would also have an all-F lineup.
Only two states – Massachusetts and Rhode Island – produced delegations that earned all As.
The Report Card includes a list of what the NAACP calls its “legislative quarterbacks,” defined as members of Congress that have “championed the NAACP’s legislative priorities or by offering an NAACP-supported amendment during floor consideration.”
This is where the NAACP dropped the ball.
Why “salute” Senators “Norm” Coleman of Minnesota, John Ensign of Nevada, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Representative Mike Castle of Delaware, all of whom earned an “F” on the NAACP Report Card? They didn’t carry the ball for Black America, they fumbled it.
One piece of advice to the NAACP: If you’re going to assign them a position on the gridiron, call them defensive linemen. Then, there would be no confusion about their wanting to prevent any forward progress.