Cars  Auto Financing  Event
Tickets  Jobs  Real
Estate  Online Degrees  Business
Opportunities Shopping

Search

How do I find
it?

Subscribe to
paper

Home

News

Travel

Money

Sports

Life

Tech

Weather

News

Nation

Nation Home

Troops
at Risk

States

Lotteries

Politics

Politics Home

USA TODAY On
Politics

Washington

Washington
Home

Government Guide

Gallup Guru

NewPolitics:
Chuck Raasch

World

World Home

Troop deaths in Iraq

Health &
Behavior

Health & Behavior
Home

Medical
Resources

Health
Information

Your
Health: Kim Painter

Weight
Loss Challenge

A Better Life

Opinion

Opinion Home

Editorials
and Debates

Columnists'
Opinions

Readers'
Opinions

Plain
Talk: Al Neuharth

DeWayne
Wickham

Education

Religion

On
Deadline

Offbeat

US politicians find ways to play on
racial fears

Posted

| Comment  | Recommend

E-mail
| Save
| Print
|

By Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press
Writer

JACKSON, Miss. — A Republican congressional
candidate in a majority-white Mississippi district runs ads trying to tie
his Democratic rival with Barack Obama's former pastor, seen by some as an
anti-white firebrand. Democrats distribute fliers accusing the Republican
of wanting a statue to honor the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

The only black justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court
is defeated after his rival runs an ad with the justice's picture next to
that of a black convict. A watchdog group calls it a "disgraceful
attack."

In South Carolina, a Republican challenger for the
U.S. Senate airs an ad with people stepping over wire fencing and
protesters holding "Secure Our Borders" signs. It includes a man and woman
saying, "Muchas gracias, Lindsey Graham," the incumbent Republican.

In the first year a major party is poised to choose a
black nominee for president, American politicians are still appealing to
voters' racial fears, with varying degrees of success.

"Racial fears and racial conflict are certainly not
segregated to the South," said Michael Dawson, a University of Chicago
political scientist who has studied race in politics. "Certainly, I think
we see it in most parts of the country."

Republicans have a long -- and often successful --
history of trying to label local Democrats as national Democrats, even
when the local candidate disagrees with the national party on some
issues.

That happened a few weeks ago in special elections
for open congressional seats in Mississippi and Louisiana, where the
Democrats both ran as anti-abortion and pro-gun candidates -- positions
that put them at odds with their national party.

After both Democrats won, Republican campaign leaders
immediately said they would re-evaluate their strategy because the tactic
appeared to backfire by increasing black voter turnout for the
Democrats.

Dawson, though, said that with a black nominee at the
top of the Democratic ticket, the conservatives' tactic of tying local
Democratic candidates to the national party will be "doubly effective" in
stirring up some voters' fears.

Andra Gillespie, an Emory University political
scientist, said candidates in the U.S. have long played to people's fears
and biases, but they're now using more subtle methods than politicians did
in the days of the Dixiecrats, the Southern segregationists who split from
the Democratic Party in the mid-1960s.

"You cannot be blatantly racist anymore," Gillespie
said.

She said politicians now use tactics described by
Princeton University political scientist Tali Mendelberg in her 2001 book,
"The Race Card: Campaign Strategy, Implicit Messages and the Norm of
Equality."

Mendelberg wrote about the use of images and buzz
words to appeal to people's subconscious ideas about race. She called this
"implicit priming."

"You're basically winking as you say 'antibusing' or
'law and order' -- or 'welfare queens' as Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s,"
Gillespie said. "If you can sort of tap into those internal prejudices ...
you can have the same effect as if you straight up use the N-word."

Mississippi, among the states with the highest number
of black elected officials, still sees campaigns use race as a wedge,
including a special election for an open congressional seat this year.

The Republican congressional candidate was Greg
Davis, mayor of Southaven, a Mississippi suburb of Memphis, Tenn. He ran a
TV ad that said Travis Childers had been endorsed by Obama. The narrator's
voice dripped with derision as he said, "when Obama's pastor cursed
America, blaming us for 9-11, Childers said nothing."

Davis stands by the ad. Childers, who, like Davis, is
white, called the ad "mean-spirited."

"Rev. Chuck Hampton is my pastor at East Booneville
Baptist Church," Childers said. "You can put anything he does wrong
squarely on me. But y'all are not holding me accountable for Rev. Jeremiah
Wright."

Days before the May 13 election, the Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee mailed copies of a flier with a photo of
an exasperated black man next to the words: "Greg Davis wants to honor the
founder of the KKK with a statue in Southaven."

In defense of the mailing, congressional campaign
committee spokesman Doug Thornell cited news reports from 2005, when
Memphis officials decided against removing Confederate names and statues
from two public parks. One park is named for Confederate President
Jefferson Davis, the other for Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who founded
the KKK but later spoke out against the group's violence.

Greg Davis said recently that he offered in 2005 to
take the Jefferson Davis statue for his city, and the mayor of nearby
Hernando, Miss., offered to take the Forrest statue.

"As you go through a campaign a lot of facts are
distorted and lies are told," Davis said. "Unfortunately, I think that one
had an effect in certain communities."

His own ad about Wright raised legitimate questions
about Democrats, Davis maintained.

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler was
defeated this year after his opponent, Michael Gableman, ran a TV ad that
said Butler "worked to put criminals on the street." It showed Butler's
photo next to one of Reuben Lee Mitchell, who was accused of rape in 1984.
Both men are black.

"Butler found a loophole," the ad says. "Mitchell
went on to molest another child."

Butler had once represented Mitchell as a public
defender and won him a new trial, but that ruling was overturned and did
not lead to Mitchell's release. However, he was paroled years later and
raped a runaway.

The Wisconsin Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee
compared the ad to the one used against Democratic presidential candidate
Michael Dukakis in 1988, with a photo of black convict Willie Horton, who
had committed crimes during a weekend furlough program that Dukakis had
supported as Massachusetts governor.

Gableman's campaign adviser Darrin Schmitz defended
the spot as a "comparison ad."

The political scientists Gillespie and Dawson both
pointed to the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Tennessee as an example of
advertising that plays on people's fears about interracial dating.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., who is black, lost the contest to
Republican Bob Corker.

A TV spot paid for by the Republican National
Committee used a bare-shouldered white actress who chirped, "I met Harold
at the Playboy party!" It apparently was a reference to Ford's attending a
2005 Playboy Super Bowl party in Jacksonville, Fla.

Ford responded by telling reporters: "I was there. I
like football, and I like girls."

Gillespie said a candidate who's the target of a
racial jab -- either subtle or flagrant -- should publicly call the attack
what it is. She said that changes the way viewers evaluate the ad because
they are forced to deal more openly with their own biases about race.

"The Ford campaign's response was the textbook wrong
thing to do," Gillespie said. "They demurred (rather than) ... call it
racist."

___

Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Madison,
Wis., and Seanna Adcox in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.

Posted

E-mail
| Save
| Print
|

Enlarge

by Jae C. Hong,
AP

Democratic
presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks
during a news conference after he toured the East Community
Ministry in Zanesville, Ohio, Tuesday, July 1, 2008. (AP
Photo/Jae C.
Hong)

Newspaper
Home Delivery - Subscribe Today

Home
• News • Travel
• Money • Sports • Life
• Tech
• Weather

About USATODAY.com: Site
Map | FAQ | Contact
Us | Jobs
with Us | Terms of
Service
Privacy
Policy/Your California Privacy Right | Media
Kit | Press
Room | Reprints
and Permissions

News
Your Way:   Mobile News
|   Email News
|   IM
Alerts |
Add
USATODAY.com RSS feeds |   Podcasts
|    Widgets

Partners:
USA WEEKEND
| Sports
Weekly | Education
| Space.com

Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a
division of Gannett Co.
Inc.