Racism Alarms Obama Backers

Candidate's foot soldiers encounter name-calling, vandalism, bomb threats

At WashingtonPost.com, Kevin Merida reports:Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Meeting cruel reaction

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."

Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.

On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."

Vandalism, bomb threats

The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright."

Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. "I thought, this is a big deal." But he was told Obama campaign officials didn't want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.

"The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming," he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.

Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don't fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.

"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "

Skilled at bridging divides

Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama's skill at bridging divides.

Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.

For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. "We've grown up in a different world," says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions -- state director, regional field director, field organizer -- that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.

Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

Racial attitudes difficult to measure

Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."

The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.

Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.

Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn't on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."

People with funny feelings

The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.

At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. "Something new," Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.

Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."

"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.

He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. "It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."

Like him?

"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.

Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.

As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."

But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.

Bill Clinton: "Obama camp 'played the race card on me'"

CNN reports:

On the eve of Tuesday’s critical Pennsylvania primary, former President Bill Clinton accused Barack Obama’s campaign of playing the race card against him.

After the phone interview with Delaware radio station WHYY Monday night, a stray comment of his on the issue was also recorded before he hung up: “I don’t think I should take any s*** from anybody on that, do you?”

The former president had been asked whether his remarks comparing Obama’s strong showing in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson in 1988 had been a mistake given their impact on his wife Hillary Clinton’s campaign. “No, I think that they played the race card on me,” said Clinton, “and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along.”

“We were talking about South Carolina political history and this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try to breed resentment elsewhere. And you know, do I regret saying it? No. Do I regret that it was used that way? I certainly do. But you really got to go some to try to portray me as a racist.”

He added that the way Obama’s campaign had reacted was “disrespectful to Jesse Jackson” and that the former presidential candidate had told him he was not offended, and that “we all know what’s going on."

UPDATE: At a Pittsburgh press availability, Obama was asked about Clinton's charge that his campaign had drawn up plans to use 'the race card.'

“Hold on a second,’’ he said. “So former President Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it? You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were words that came out of his mouth. Not words that came out of mine.’’

Obama Throws Gutter Ball, Clinton Plays Pals

At Bloomberg.com, Margaret Carlson writes:

For his first time running a $200 million corporation, Barack Obama has done a good job. No small vendors left behind in Iowa or New Hampshire with their bills unpaid, no newspaper stories about staff members screaming at one another, no having to lend the campaign cash to keep going.

Yet he's made two big mistakes, and they are doozies.

First, he didn't see how regular folks who saw the videos of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright wouldn't be able to get them out of their heads.

The clips are an unfair representation of 30 years of giving three sermons every Sunday, and Obama said he wasn't in the pews when Wright delivered them. Still, he hasn't said what remarks he was present for. And even if they were only a faint echo of what we've heard, why would Obama want his daughters to hear them or think those not conversant with black liberation theology wouldn't be shocked?

His second big mistake is bowling with others in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He ignored the risk every politician faces when trying to be one of the people if they're not, a risk that doubles if you pursue the official state sport when you've never worn a league shirt with your name above the pocket.

A savvy aide would have had Obama devote as much preparation to avoiding a 7-10 split as preparing for debates. Presidents know that if you aren't sure you can get the first pitch from the mound across home plate, better to toss it (like a girl) from the bleachers.

No Joke, Sir

By now, as many people who will ever watch a candidate forum have likely seen Obama's 37 score in a game that started with a gutter ball. He joked that an 8-year-old was giving him tips, but the reality is he didn't even know how low a score it was. He should be grateful this wasn't deer-hunting season.

It's easy to see why Obama tried to roll a few frames. Voters hunger for authenticity, or so polls say, so candidates and their consultants do their best to simulate it. This boils down to looking, acting, or sounding like the locals, eating homemade specialties, even if it's funnel cake and smoked meat products, or wearing a Teamsters or Yankees cap for the first time.

What's amazing this campaign isn't that Obama, who lifted himself up by his bootstraps but resembles George Clooney with a Harvard Law degree more than Clint Eastwood, is having a hard time passing himself off as ordinary folk. It's how easily Hillary Clinton is doing it.

Clinton, the antiwar Wellesley commencement speaker, Yale superstar, and darling of elite professionals who may have inspired the popular ``Die, Yuppie Scum'' posters, has come to epitomize the scrappy underdog.

A Bad Day

A bad day for her, we learned from her memory of landing in Bosnia, is being met with flowers and poetry on the tarmac after in-flight entertainment consisting of a live performance by Sheryl Crow.

What constitutes a good day for someone who hasn't waited in a line since 1992? Traveling with David Letterman and being greeted by a 21-gun salute? To her staff who never questioned her improbable tale of derring-do, a fine turn of events would consist of an evasive landing, dodging sniper fire from the press.

Clinton's lost her college-educated, professional base but made up for it by successfully wooing working-class whites. She couldn't change her hairstyle or job description in Washington without comment. I'm mystified that she's changed personas for the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, since I grew up in that swath of the Keystone State between Pittsburgh and the eastern seaboard that remains happily stuck in the 1950s, when men were men and the steel mills thrived.

Raising Eyebrows

When I return there -- which is often because my brother, of whom I'm guardian, lives in the house where we grew up -- I raise eyebrows for driving a foreign car and having gone to law school without signing on with the FBI.

Still, I can pass because I got through the 1960s and '70s without ever thinking of the policeman down the street as a pig or not trusting anyone over 30. My parents were beloved. My father worked for the Naval depot, golfed on the public course, and played cards at the Knights of Columbus hall.

My mother ran us -- I had two brothers -- and was the first one there when something went wrong, with a casserole, a pan of brownies and an open wallet. She wished she weren't so plump, but everyone else was and it wouldn't have entered her mind to jump around to an exercise video in a town that still lacks for spas. There were rocky marriages but most stayed together.

`Rocky' Grabs Them

In many places, the daughters and sons of such families look back and think their parents were hopelessly hokey, if not chumps. But not in Harrisburg, the town that Starbucks forgot until recently. Like upstate New York where the blue-haired ladies also had to cope with disappearing jobs and hound dog husbands, central Pennsylvania is Clinton country.

You look around my little Harrisburg suburb and her ``Rocky'' doggedness has grabbed the sympathy of people so unlike her yet drawn by what looks like a hard-luck story. It's a place where it's not such a leap from ``he can't bowl'' to ``How could he possibly know what I'm going through?''

Already, her strategists are telling superdelegates not to vote for Obama if he can't win big states like Pennsylvania. That's code for he can't win white working-class votes.

Obama doesn't have to overcome Clinton's lead, though he does need to go back to the days when he won the white vote by substantial margins in Wisconsin, Virginia and Maryland. He has to do better than the equivalent of a 37 score at Pleasant Valley Lanes, in Altoona.

Voters Split on Spending Initiatives on States' Ballots

The NY Times reports:

In Texas, voters were in a spending mood on Tuesday. In New Jersey and Oregon, they were not.

Five statewide bond initiatives were approved by Texas residents this week, including $3 billion for cancer research and prevention that was championed by Lance Armstrong and up to $5 billion for highway improvement projects.

But in New Jersey voters rejected $450 million in new spending for stem cell research, and in Oregon they blocked a plan for increased taxes for health care.

Backing an effort for increased fiscal restraint, Washington residents approved statewide measures to require a two-thirds vote by the Legislature for fee increases and a constitutional amendment requiring that 1 percent of general state revenue for each fiscal year be placed in a budget stabilization account.

Heading the other direction, voters in Maine approved a total of $134 million in bonds for research and development, campus improvements and land conservation.

Isolated voting problems were reported in Colorado, Georgia, Maryland and Pennsylvania because of a combination of poll worker error and machine failures.

Contests in three states offered clues to how certain hot-button issues might play in the 2008 presidential race.

In Virginia, concerns about illegal immigration did not produce the voter turnout and fervor that Republicans sought. The state has become a national testing ground for some of the strictest anti-immigration policies, and Republican lawmakers promised to crack down with plans in some counties to deny services to illegal immigrants.

But Democrats picked up four seats in the State Senate, to take the majority for the first time in more than a decade. They also gained three seats in the House, cutting into the Republican majority.

In Utah, voters resoundingly rejected a school voucher program that was supported by the Republican governor and Republican-controlled Legislature. The measure was controversial because, rather than focusing on low-income students in poor-performing schools, the program would have been available to families regardless of income or school performance.

Supporters said the measure would widen options for parents, but critics, including national teachers unions, faulted it as undercutting money for public education. Had the measure been approved, political strategists say, it would probably have been pushed in other Republican-leaning states next year.

Oregon voters approved a measure that curbs the land-use rights of developers of subdivisions and industrial and commercial sites. Supporters of the measure, especially environmental groups, raised twice as much money as opponents, who received most of their money from timber companies and related interests.

Property rights measures that empowered large landowners were blocked in 2006 in California, Idaho and Washington but passed in Arizona, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a liberal advocacy group that tracks ballot trends.

Plenty of new spending was approved on local initiatives. For example, voters in Mecklenburg County, N.C., home of Charlotte, approved $582 million in municipal bonds for public school construction, community colleges and open-space projects.

County and city voters in Denver approved $430 million in bonds for transportation, parks, cultural centers, public safety and libraries.

For poll workers in some counties, low turnouts prevented voting problems from escalating.

The most serious failures occurred in Rockville, Md., where thousands of voters were mistakenly identified as having already voted by absentee ballot when they arrived at the polls. Poll workers kept handwritten lists of the names of everyone who voted. To ensure that no one voted twice, they said they planned to compare the list to the names of those who cast absentee ballots.

More than 60 touch-screen machines failed in Marion County, Ind., for several hours, possibly because of battery problems or the memory cards’ being inserted upside-down, election officials said.

Voting officials in southwest Fulton County, Ga., received court approval on Tuesday afternoon to extend the voting day by an hour after machines did not work because of poll workers’ error, election officials said. Eighteen to 30 voters left without voting before the machines were repaired.

Voters in Weld County, Colo., were given paper ballots for about an hour in the morning until officials repaired a handful of voting machines.

When poll workers in Denver starting falling behind deadline in counting ballots, the county called in several dozen SWAT and other police officers to help. Election officials said the police had assisted in past elections because they had undergone the background checks required to count votes.

Technicians in Bedford County, Pa., had to visit all 40 precincts to repair every optical scanning machine used to read ballots.