Before the lecture on why black people don’t vote much and how that holds us back, let’s entertain the very real responsibility that Primary 2006 might turn out to be mostly good news for the team in blue.
The EYE has not been silent on the chutzpah of Jeff Smith to fly home from Vermont to file as an untested politician in a historically black senatorial district, then pursue his bid when two experienced black legislators – Yaphett El-Amin and Amber Boykins – also pursued the prized senate seat. But there are some good reasons to cheer his victory. His politics in filing were as self-serving as anybody else’s politics, but his policy stands promise to be good for the people – and that would include the black people in the 4th District and the state of Missouri.
In the same vein, some entrenched black Democrats had reason to oppose 72nd District state Rep. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, who sided with her gender and her political mentor, Harriet Woods, over a black incumbent (Joe Adams) in a tight mayoral race right in the middle of her campaign. She also did not hesitate to target and ostracize two fellow black state legislators (Rodney Hubbard and Ted Hoskins) when they departed from her in policy by backing school vouchers, while loading up on money from the All Children Matter PAC. But anybody with a pulse who watches state politics would have to admit that Chappelle-Nadal is a young, bright and diligent legislator who is willing to oppose powerful interests to fight for progressive public policy.
Smith deserved the heat he took during the primary campaign for his pie-in-the-sky approach to racial politics. The fight was on then, and it sounded silly to talk about campaigning in St. Louis as if race doesn’t matter. But the fight is over, and who looks silly now?
If anyone played the race card in this primary, it was Sandi Colquitt – whose only campaign point of substance was that “Maria ain’t black” – El-Amin, with that ill-fated “known Caucasian” thing, and Derio Gambaro, whose computerized telephone campaign messages emphasized Smith’s degree in African-American studies in an apparent attempt to blacken his opponent’s face to confuse white voters. And Colquitt, El-Amin and Gambaro got beat and beat badly. Colquitt got trounced – 64 percent (2,327 votes) to 36 percent (1,310) – with former state Rep. Betty Thompson and almost every other black elected official in the district standing behind her. And they all got beat by candidates with openly – even brazenly – progressive politics.
It’s enough to give a progressive of any color a reason to hope, coming into a mid-term election with an incumbent Republican president in such sorry shape even a compliant GOP hack like Roy Blunt feels free to question the president’s value for incumbents on the campaign trail (as he did in a recent interview with Bloomberg TV).
By the way, even “Team El-Amin” has reason to feel somewhat redeemed today. As Yaphett herself announced the morning after she lost, the team went two-for-three, which is very good in baseball and even better in politics. She didn’t crack the state Senate, but her vigorous campaigning and effective grass-roots organizing helped her husband Talibdin El-Amin to handily win her seat (and, as wags were saying Wednesday, he won back the pants in his family) while homegirl Jamilah Nasheed also got a boost that helped her to win a crowded state rep race of her own.