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Bush asks blacks to rethink support for democrats Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aW3_PT8vnfz4&refer=ushttp://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aW3_PT8vnfz4&refer=us
Bush Asks Blacks to Rethink Support for Democrats (Update1)
July 23 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush asked black voters to rethink their support for Democrats by posing questions to the National Urban League, including whether the Democratic Party takes ``African American voters for granted.''
``It's a fair question,'' Bush, a Republican, said during a speech to the Urban League's annual conference in Detroit. ``I know a lot of politicians assume they have your vote. But did they earn it and do they deserve it?''
Bush, a day after Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry addressed the conference, touted his record on civil rights, said his No Child Left Behind Act is closing the gap between black and white students, and announced an initiative to expand minority business ownership. Then he asked the audience to vote for him, saying ``I believe you've got to earn the vote and seek it.''
``Bush has no chance with the black vote in 2004,'' said Jeremy Mayer, a George Mason University assistant professor and author of ``Running on Race,'' a study of racial politics. ``It's not just the economy, and it's not just the legacy of Florida. African Americans never approved of the war the way white Americans did.''
NAACP
Bush, 58, had been criticized for declining to speak at the NAACP's convention last week. The Bush re-election campaign said the president seeks a variety of ways to reach out to black voters and announced last week he would appear before the Urban League, a New York-based nonprofit group that advocates economic development in predominantly African-American communities.
He ``was smart to choose the National Urban League,'' Mayer said. ``He would have had a very unpleasant response from the NAACP.''
Kerry, 60, showed up at the NAACP convention and used his speech there to chide the president for snubbing the NAACP, the nation's biggest civil rights group.
Registered black voters are backing Kerry by an 8-1 margin for the Nov. 2 election, according to a CBS/Black Entertainment Television Network poll released this week. About 10 percent of black voters cast ballots for Bush in 2000, says the Washington- based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
Kerry's Response
Kerry's campaign today said Bush's administration has failed to provide economic opportunity to all Americans and blacks have been hurt. Black unemployment was 10.1 percent in June, double the rate for white unemployment and an increase of 23 percent since Bush took office in 2001, the campaign said, citing the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
``This president has rolled back the clock on civil rights and made it harder for young people to live the American dream,'' Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer said in a statement before Bush's speech. ``John Kerry believes we can do better and understands that building a stronger America entails helping our metropolitan areas.''
During his speech, Bush said his administration would work with the Urban League in a new initiative to expand business ownership and entrepreneurship among minorities.
``Our plan is to help people help themselves, to create an environment where the entrepreneur can flourish,'' he said. This is ``a practical application of federal assets to help people understand and learn how to run their own business,'' said Bush.
Bush Appeal
Bush also listed steps he's taken to aid black communities, saying he was the first president to ban racial profiling at the federal level. He spoke about his efforts to combat the spread of AIDS in Africa, touted his faith-based program to direct more federal money to religious charities and listed African American members of his administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Education Rod Paige.
President Bill Clinton had more blacks serving in his White House, but the blacks in Bush's White House are ``much more influential,'' said Mayer. Still, ``it's not mattering to African American voters.''
Paige, a lifelong NAACP member, came to Bush's defense when he declined the NAACP invitation. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Paige accused NAACP Chairman Julian Bond and President Kweisi Mfume of ``vitriol at a president who has appointed more African-Americans to high-profile posts.''
In his speech, Bush acknowledged ``the Republican Party's got a lot of work to do, I understand that.'' He asked blacks to consider ``some questions,'' including whether ``the traditional solutions of the Democratic Party truly served the African American community.''
Blacks Back Kerry
Among black registered voters nationwide, 79 percent back Kerry and 10 percent support Bush in the CBS/BET poll taken July 9-15. The poll surveyed 868 registered voters in a larger pool of 986 African American adults. For the larger pool, the margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt said Republicans would vie for support from blacks and will announce a steering committee of prominent black leaders in the next few weeks.
Among the questions Bush posed to the League: ``Has class warfare or higher taxes ever created decent jobs in the inner city,'' said Bush. ``It's worthy of this country for this debate to go forward and these questions asked and answered. I'm here to say there's an alternative this year.''
Michigan holds 17 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency and is one of 18 states that were decided in the 2000 election by 7 percentage points or less. Bush lost Michigan by 5.3 percentage points to former Vice President Al Gore in 2000.
Kerry, a four-term U.S. senator from Massachusetts, leads Bush by at least 7 percentage points in the state, according to a July 6-8 poll of 600 likely voters by the American Research Group. The survey's margin of error was 4 percentage points.
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