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local Seattle columnist on Dean
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Minorities await Dr. Dean's house call
By <A HREF="mailto:robertjamieson at seattlepi.com">ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.</A> SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Howard Dean blitzed into Seattle the other day talking about how he was "a uniter not a divider" -- about how he believed in the pluralistic dream articulated by Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago this week.
An energizing message for the chanting, cheering throng of 10,000 in Westlake Center Sunday night? You bet.
Problem was Dean was preaching to a crowd of mostly white, mostly liberal, mostly converted voters from the People's Republic of the Emerald City.
The city's rainbow -- indeed our community's rich ethnic diversity -- was nowhere in sight, nowhere to hear this dreamer's message up close.
A scan of the crowd showed sprinkles of minorities, suggesting Dean and the Dems have their work cut out for them if they want to make inroads with crucial blocs of untapped voters, especially young blacks and Hispanics.
"I hear Dean is Chinese. Is he?" a young African American man asked me before Dean, a physician and former governor of Vermont, appeared on stage.
Talk about a disconnect.
I thought this guy was kidding. Turns out he wasn't.
"That's what someone told me," shrugged the man, Allen Potts.
Allen and I were two brothers in a crowd, the only people of color among dozens of people standing in one corner of the plaza. As I spoke with Allen, a union painter in Seattle, I discovered he wasn't an uninformed boob.
He was a thoughtful, articulate person who was only now getting the Dean message -- and by accident. Allen just happened to stumble upon the big rally.
Allen spoke in detail about the Bush family's connection to the savings-and-loan scandal, about execution rates in the state of Texas, about why he had voted for Al Gore in the last election. In his right hand, he clutched some papers he had freshly printed from a Web site about the Posse Comitatus Act and Homeland Security.
"I know little about Dean's politics and I know nothing of his personal history," the 32-year-old said. "I'm looking to be informed, inspired."
There is a bloc of young minorities (not to mention people of all backgrounds) waiting to be informed, inspired, touched.
Blacks between the ages of 18 and 35 make up about 40 percent of the black voting-age population -- but they made up just 2 percent of the entire vote in the 2000 elections.
That apathy concerns Democratic leaders nationwide.
The New York Times recently reported that 74 percent of African Americans identified themselves as Democrats in 2000. By last year, that number dropped to 63 percent.
It is not as if an increasing number of young blacks are stampeding to the GOP. More and more of them are identifying as independents.
Like Hispanics, they are ripe for courtship, ripe to become swing votes. The party that taps them taps a potential gold mine.
But if early local efforts by the Dean Machine are any indication, plenty of work lies ahead. In recent months, the campaign has held meetings in Seattle and on the Eastside.
One popular location has been Piecora's New York Pizza, located in a hip-and-youthful Capitol Hill neighborhood. The pizzeria is also close to the Central District -- the heart and soul of the black community in Seattle.
During a recent gathering at Piecora's, people passed around magazines with Dean's picture on the cover. People heard from Betty Means, the former aide to Gov. Mike Lowry, who was hired to run Dean's statewide campaign. People even discussed a cookout.
One woman demanded: "For the barbecue, is there a vegetarian or vegan option? Or is it just carnivorous?"
Folks milled in the restaurant beneath pictures of New York, the city where Dean grew up.
The crowd was anything but a mirror of New York's diversity: One black guy was there; there was no one discernibly Latino. Ethnically speaking, the meeting could have been straight out of a 1950s sitcom or a gathering of the old Mississippi Democratic Party (without the ducktail haircuts).
Where were the people of color?
"It's a problem that needs to be dealt with and with which we are dealing," says former Democratic State Chair Karen Marchioro, a Dean backer. Marchioro has reached out to well-known Seattle attorney Lem Howell, who in the early 1970s was a convener in this state for the presidential campaign of Sen. Ed Muskie.
Howell, who is black, brought his daughter who was visiting from D.C. to Dean's fund-raiser at the Seattle Westin Hotel. She took one look at the crowd and said, Dad, we need to get more people of color involved.
"Yes, we do," Howell said. "Blacks and Hispanics."
A similar concern exists nationally. Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe is reaching out to Hispanics, highlighting the "disastrous Republican record on issues of interest to the Hispanic community."
McAuliffe adds: "Hispanics are tired of empty rhetoric."
But are Democrats or Dean beyond reproach?
Here it is the Dean Machine -- which parallels the energy and spirit of Eugene McCarthy's 1968 presidential campaign -- talks about making Americans not feel like second-class citizens in their own country, about broad inclusivity.
Why, then, is it taking so long for Dean's Democratic message to reach thinking voters like Allen Potts?
P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125 or <A HREF="mailto:robertjamieson at seattlepi.com"> robertjamieson at seattlepi.com</A>
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