Dean's New Challenge: Reaching Black Voters
By JODI WILGOREN
Cynthia Williams showed up nearly an hour before Howard Dean's scheduled appearance at Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Harlem yesterday morning, eager to disappear among the women in feathered hats who filled the pews. For once, the only thing making Ms. Williams, an African-American computer technician from Nutley, N.J., stand out was the blue Dean button on her lapel.
"So many events that I go to I'm like one of maybe two black faces," said Ms. Williams, 37, a staunch Dean fan who has followed her candidate to more than a dozen events in New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire over the last year. "The only thing I can say the reason why is there hasn't been any effort to reach out to minorities."
Ms. Williams's experience points to a problem that has been looming over Dr. Dean's presidential campaign throughout his surge to the front of the field this summer and fall. How can Dr. Dean, the former governor of a nearly all-white, mostly rural state, speak to urban issues and motivate the minority voters who have been a mainstay of the Democratic electorate for decades?
The campaign has devoted increasing attention to this question in recent weeks, calling attention to the support it has won from several leading black politicians and two major unions with many African-American and Hispanic members. Indeed, the crowds at union-led rallies on Dr. Dean's behalf this weekend in Detroit and New York were among the most racially diverse he has seen, and he has recently begun referring to his campaign as a rainbow.
But it was just a few weeks ago that Dr. Dean's handling of criticism for his comments about wanting to be the candidate for "guys with Confederate flag decals on their pickup trucks" raised concerns about his command of the complex racial dynamics of the country, particularly in the South.
Dr. Dean, 54, was not active in the civil rights movement, and has neither the political network of black ministers and community leaders nor the personal relationships that have helped other white candidates. His campaign's heavy use of the Internet has largely bypassed poorer pockets of African-Americans and Latinos, and issues like crime, drugs and failing public schools have not been centerpieces of his message.
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