Alabama County Commissioner: Support Hillary ‘Mainly Because She’s White’…
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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama’s major black political groups have split their endorsements for president, with the Alabama New South Coalition giving its support to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday.
The Alabama Democratic Conference, the black wing of the state Democratic Party, endorsed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton in October.
Obama received the majority of the votes when the predominantly black Alabama New South Coalition met Saturday to make its endorsement. Coalition officials did not disclose the exact outcome of the private vote.
U.S Rep. Artur Davis, state chairman of Obama’s campaign, said he was pleased the group put aside doubts, expressed by some black political leaders, about whether a black candidate could get enough white votes to be elected president.
“That doubt, that cynicism could have been written to prevent every piece of progress we’ve had in our lifetime,” said Davis, D-Ala.
Before the endorsement vote, Perry County Commissioner Albert Turner praised Obama’s qualifications, but urged the group to support Clinton.
“The question you have to put forth to yourself is that whether or not in this racist country a black man named Obama — when we are shooting at Osama — can win the presidency of the United States?” Turner said.
Turner said Clinton is the Democrat most likely to win in November “because of her husband and because of some other things, mainly because she’s white.”
When the Alabama Democratic Conference endorsed Clinton in October, leaders cited long-standing friendships with Clinton and her husband and voiced concerns about whether white voters would support a black Democrat.
Byrdie Larkin, a political scientist at historically black Alabama State University in Montgomery, said the coalition’s endorsement of Obama gives his Alabama campaign “a sense of credibility” and shows the black vote is not monolithic.
She said the competing endorsements should increase interest in Alabama’s primary and help boost turnout on Feb. 5.
Traditionally, blacks make up 40 percent or more of the Democratic primary vote. In statewide polling of likely Democratic voters, Clinton has consistently led Obama.
But with New South’s endorsement, “his chances just got a lot better,” said state Sen. Hank Sanders of Selma, the coalition’s president emeritus.
Sanders’ family is emblematic of the division in the black vote.
At the endorsement meeting, Sanders’ wife, Selma attorney Faya Rose Toure, urged the group to endorse Clinton. Their daughter, Malika, favored Obama. After the endorsement vote, Toure said she would support the group’s endorsement, which she attributed to enthusiasm over the prospect of electing the nation’s first black president.
“Never in history has an African-American come so close to the presidency, and people in the New South could not ignore it. The reality is race did play an issue, and that’s all right,” she said.
Obama’s campaign has been highly visible in Alabama in recent weeks, opening campaign offices in Montgomery and Birmingham and planning another opening Monday in Tuscaloosa. That gives the campaign more offices than any other Democrat in the state.
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