Consider This from NPR - What Does a Record Number of Black Candidates Really Mean for Republicans?

Episode Date: October 15, 2022

In a party not known for ethnic diversity, 22 Black candidates are running for Republican House seats this year. And for the first time, we could see two Black Republican senators serving simultaneously. The historically diverse lineup also includes Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans on Republican tickets for the midterms. While some Republican see a shift toward Ronald Regan's vision of the party as an inclusive "Big Tent''. But others say that the party's problematic record on race continues to keep Black voters away - even those who consider themselves conservative. Host Michel Martin talks to Theodore Johnson, a researcher, and writer whose work focuses on how race plays out in politics and policy. Johnson writes a column for the center-right news and opinion site, The Bulwark.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam. It was edited by Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Natalie Winston.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. I'm a Republican who happens to be Black. Will 2022 be the year of the Black Republican? What drew me to the Republican Party was really about the principles of conservatism and individual liberty. Record number of African-American candidates in the GOP.

By any measure, this is an historic year for Republicans of color seeking seats in the U.S. Congress. Twenty-two Black candidates are running for seats in the U.S. House, and the historically diverse slate of candidates also includes significant numbers of Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans on the Republican ticket, as well as those who identify as more than one race. By next year, two Black Republicans could be serving simultaneously in the Senate for the first time. That's news given the Republican Party's post-civil rights era shift to consolidate support among white conservatives, often by leaning into racially coded themes that alienate Black and other voters. Despite that, Theodore Johnson of the Brennan Center for Justice reminds us that some African Americans have always

identified as Republicans and that a core group has stuck with the party no matter what. 10% of Black folks are just Republicans. And about one in five Black folks consider themselves conservatives, even though many of them don't vote for Republicans, they vote for Democrats. So there's always been a pool of Black Republicans and Black conservatives from which the Republican Party could draw from for its candidates. The noteworthy level of racial and ethnic diversity among congressional candidates this year leads some in the party to hope that Ronald Reagan's vision of the GOP as a big tent may finally be on the horizon.

I think Black Americans, again, are becoming more awakened to the fact that when they look at their own personal communities, nothing has gotten better under Democrat or liberal leadership. Terrace Todd says that sums up his story more or less. He worked in the education department under the Trump administration and currently works for the Conservative Heritage Foundation as a manager of coalition engagement. But he started his political career as a Democrat. I started noticing that there were certain things on the left that just really did not agree with my faith and what I've always been raised to believe in. Todd says his political conversion was a process.

It took a lot of soul searching and research into the party's platform. But eventually, Todd says he came to the conclusion that the GOP was just a better fit for both his religious beliefs and his political views. And he says there are a lot more people like him. I looked at party platforms and then I realized and came to the conclusion that I'm truly a conservative guy. And I truly believe to this day that the majority of African Americans as well as Latinos and many others are truly conservative people. They just don't know it yet. Lots of strategists and office holders agree with Todd. They have long hoped to see a shift in the decades-long allegiance of most African Americans to the Democratic Party. But for all the attention focused on this new crop of candidates,

one problem still looms large for a lot of the Black community. Consider this. The Republican Party's record and rhetoric on race draws consistent criticism. Does being a Black Republican mean loving a party that doesn't love you back? The Republican Party just has not been a welcoming place, candidly, for African Americans for a really long time. That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It's Saturday, October 15th. This message comes from WISE,

the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees download the wise app today or visit wise.com t's and c's apply support for npr and the following message come from carnegie corporation of new york working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education democracy and peace More information at carnegie.org. You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. Joe Biden's 5 million illegal aliens are on the verge of replacing you.

Stand back and stand by. They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that. They're not owed that. That was former President Donald Trump, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Senator Tommy Tuberville, just some of the Republican political figures who have used racially coded, if not outright racist language, as part of their appeal to their supporters. It's not new. It's been a part of the GOP's southern strategy since the civil rights era. So how do black Republicans react to these kinds of comments when they come from fellow Republicans, even party leadership? For his part, Terrace Todd says Republicans being taken to task for making racist remarks is just a tactic of the

left to distract from what he considers their failing policies. We have a horrible economy. We're in a recession, if you will. I mean, we have all these things that are going on in our country, but yet they always resort to racism because that's the only thing in their playbook. And that's all they have done. When I say they, I'm talking about the left, the political left, if you will. Todd says he just doesn't focus on the kinds of comments that, say, Senator Tommy Tuberville made recently equating reparations as payment to Black criminals. Personally, I don't really take too much interest in that kind of stuff because I know racism is always in, this ongoing cycle of racist rhetoric and appeals to white supremacy have been a deal breaker. For people like Sophia Nelson, anyway, the last administration was the last straw. The long and short of it is Donald Trump has changed everything about the way we do politics. Sophia Nielsen is a contributing editor at the news outlet The Griot. Her most recent book is a memoir, Be the One You Need. But before she became a journalist, author, and political commentator, she worked in Republican politics. George Herbert Walker Bush was the first Republican president I worked for, and his campaign is re-elected in 92. Nielsen says she gradually became disillusioned with the party's lack of outreach to Black voters and the lack of Black leadership within the party.

There's no reason for Republicans to care about Black voters other than they should care about their country and speak into other countrymen. But it's not worth the effort that I think they think they'd have to put in. And then ideologically, they're not aligned on voting rights and the things that are important to the Black community. The Republican Party just doesn't speak to those core issues for Black voters. They just don't. Nelson says she was a lifelong straight ticket Republican voter until she voted for Barack Obama in 2008. She says it's been difficult for her to vote Republican since then. But when you ask her the main reason she left the party, well, we'll let her tell you. Donald Trump opened his campaign with an open, brazen, racist lie that President Barack Obama, our first Black president, wasn't even a real American.

You don't understand how deep that runs for Black people because that's like, show me your papers, boy. But they've kind of taken the gloves off now. There's a pushback that says white people aren't being treated right, that white people are being discriminated against. And that's Donald Trump 101. He has perfected the division and the divisiveness that we see in our country right now that pits us against one another. But will more Black Republican candidates lead to more Black voters? I don't buy into the whole Black people are somehow moving towards becoming Republican. That's just not true.

That's coming up. If you go to any urban city in the country and talk to folks that own barbershops and beauty salons about regulations and taxes, they're going to tell you that there's too much of a regulatory burden for their small business and taxes are too high. That is an inroads for a Republican message. If you talk to lots of folks, say, in the Black church about social conservative kinds of messages around the family or the proper way to rear children, for example, there might be a ready audience. And so by making these kinds of appeals around small business, economic security, traditional sort of family structures, then you find those folks that might be more open to the Republican message. Theodore Johnson is senior director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and writes a column for The Bulwark.

That's a center-right news and opinion outlet. He's a retired Navy commander who holds a doctorate in policy, and he researches and writes often about the ways that race plays out in politics and policy. He's been writing about this surge of Black Republicans on this year's ticket, so I asked him what he thinks is behind it. Yeah, it's such an interesting question. And look, I'll tell you, the first thing is it's not due to policy. It's not because the Republicans are having winning arguments on abortion or gun rights or voting rights and they're winning over Black Americans to their side. So we can put that aside. So I think the explanation is twofold. The first part is for the last 50, 60 years, about one in 10

Black people have voted for Republicans in congressional and presidential elections. So 10% of Black folks are just Republicans. And about one in five black folks consider themselves conservatives, even though many of them don't vote for Republicans, they vote for Democrats. So there's always been a pool of black Republicans and black conservatives from which the Republican Party could draw from for its candidates. The problem is many of those black Republicans didn't see a pathway in Congress under the Republican Party because much of the party, its electoral base is white and many of its representatives have been white. So the reason we've seen such an increase today, and frankly, it's been an increase that's been happening for about a decade now, is because this version of the Republican Party has been captured by successive movements. First, the Tea Party after President Obama's election, and now Trump and the MAGA movement. And in these times when a party is captured by movements, it's easier for Black Republicans to signal their allegiance to

the party when there's a movement that sort of they can cling to as a signal. It's very hard to show that you're more pro-life than the white candidate or you're more in support of lower taxes or smaller government, but it's easy to signal that you're a more Trump lover than the other side or more of a Tea Party person because those movements come with co-signers. A Trump endorsement cuts through all the chaff of policy. Being supported by the local Tea Party chapter cut through all of the other things. And when that happens for minority candidates, then Republican voters in primaries in particular will be more likely to support those minority candidates, even if they hold

higher levels of racial resentment writ large. And when it comes to things like policy or perceptions of how other groups behave or their attitudes. Is this also about recruitment? I mean, we've heard Republican Party officials for some years now have had various projects and initiatives aimed at recruiting candidates from different backgrounds. Is that part of this? And is that bearing fruit? Yes, 100 percent. Yes. And the way these black Republicans that have always been there finally recognized that this was their opportunity, it was because the Republican

Party recruited them and let them know we have an opportunity for you if you so choose to run. So the Republican Party very quietly has set up recruitment centers, outreach centers in communities across the country, sometimes in strip malls and these not, you know, very overt sort of loud establishments, but very quietly recruiting folks. And there are reaping rewards for this. It may not show up in the amount of votes they get from Black voters across the country, but it is showing up in the amount of minority candidates that are now running on the Republican banner. You can't escape the fact that the Republican Party really leaned into racist rhetoric in some situations over the past four years, particularly in its embrace

of former President Trump. I'm not saying that this is a party-wide phenomenon, but it surfaces at the highest levels. You see my point? So it's just, it's like, how do you, are these candidates, is it they ignore that or that they don't see it as relevant or they don't see it as endemic to the party? I think some of them see themselves as

exceptional. And so that applies to maybe the group at large, but they are proof that if you work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, you can break away from the pathologies of the group at large. Some of them are just opportunists. And so they're willing to go along with whatever's necessary in order to win office. And then some of them are actually principled conservatives who believe they can do better good in the party and are willing to hold their nose at the uglier stuff because they think they have more value by being at the table with the McConnells than being out of politics altogether and not having a voice at the table. So there is no one answer, but I think those three categories pretty much catch

the folks that we're seeing. As you've already pointed out, there's always been a deep strain of conservatism in the African-American population. But why do you think we haven't seen it convert to political allegiance in the same way it seems to with white conservatives? So one thing is that when we talk about conservatism writ large, or even, you know, progressives, we assume a bundle of policy positions come with the label. So if you are conservative, you are necessarily pro-life, you are necessarily pro-Second Amendment, you are necessarily in favor of low taxes, strong national defense, law and order, et cetera. But in reality, for all Americans, no matter where you sit on the

ideological spectrum, your views are much more complex than that. And so for Black conservatives, instead of adopting this sort of conservative ideology as a whole, the thing that matters most to Black voters, period, whether you're conservative or liberal, is the protection of your civil rights, because the black story in America has always been grounded in our ability to touch civil rights, to be afforded the full rights and privileges of citizenship. And so since the day we've been granted the right to vote, certainly post-Civil War and the 15th Amendment in 1870, we have almost exclusively voted for one party over the other. It used to be the Republicans all the way through about 1920s and 30s, and then it began to shift over to the Democratic Party. And that happened pretty much in full by 1964, absolutely. But it wasn't that those parties completely flipped their policy positions as a whole. It's that those parties completely flipped their policy positions as a whole.

It's that those parties traded positions on where they stood on the issue of civil rights and the role of the federal government to enforce those civil rights. The pro-civil rights party, the pro-strong enforcement of civil rights protections party has always gotten 80, 90 percent of the black vote dating back 150 years. And so whether you're a conservative, a black conservative, black liberal, the most important thing is that the rights that people have died for, bled for, sacrificed for, are not stripped away from you just because you believe in states' rights or small government or lower taxes. That remains preeminent. The black experience in our country demands it. That was Theodore Johnson. He is Senior Director of the Fellows Program

at the Brennan Center for Justice. His most recent book is When the Stars Begin to Fall, Overcoming Racism and Renewing the Promise of America. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography.

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