Clinton Woos Black Vote, Targets Obama By: Ben Smith January 22, 2007 11:38 PM EST
When Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton went away for their last holiday before the storm of the 2008 presidential election, they chose the island of Anguilla, a tiny British possession a bit off the Caribbean social circuit.
Aides to the Democratic senator from New York refused even to discuss the reports of what country they were in, and nothing more of their trip was ever revealed.
But there aren't, really, vacations in Hillaryland. And the Clintons' time in Anguilla was well spent. For although they weren't hobnobbing with the usual political suspects, they spent much of their vacation with someone more important: Robert Johnson, the man known as the "First Black Billionaire."
Far from conceding African-American support to the most credible candidate ever of African descent, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the Clintons are pushing aggressively for the help of their longtime allies in the black business, political and entertainment elite. Clinton's supporters say she intends to make the Illinois senator fight for every black endorsement and every black vote. It's a strategy that pushes Obama to decide just how black he can afford to be: Will he pitch himself to African-American voters as the black candidate, or hew to the post-racial line that's helped make him sensationally popular with white Democrats?
"He's not built to be the black candidate," said a Clinton adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "I don't think he wants to play to the Jesse Jackson wing of the party, and I'm not convinced that he wins them overwhelmingly either. His youth and inexperience play against him in that world -- he's the young whippersnapper who didn't pay his dues."
Obama aides Tommy Vietor and Robert Gibbs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Johnson -- founder of Black Entertainment Television and owner of the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats -- stands at the pinnacle of the black elite and embodies its longstanding ties to the Clintons. He didn't respond to a request for an interview, but three people familiar with the Clintons' Anguilla trip confirmed that Johnson -- an old Friend of Bill -- spent time with the Clintons on the island, where he owns a home. And while Johnson isn't a prominent public figure in American politics, he's a major behind-the-scenes power crucial to a central front in Clinton's campaign for president: a full-court press on the African-American elite.
"She is conceding no ground, and I don't anticipate or expect that the African-American community would want her to," said Minyon Moore, a consultant to the Clinton campaign who's directing her national black outreach.
"I don't see it as a hard battle for her," Moore said of the contest for the support of black leaders. "I see it as a reaffirmation of people she already knows and support she already has."
Moore's own presence on the campaign appears to be part of that story. A White House aide to Bill Clinton, she advised Obama last year before returning to the Clinton camp. She described Obama yesterday as "a very well-spoken young man."
Another senior African-America operative, Bill Lynch, has also signed on with Clinton.
"I tried to reach out to the Obama people, but I haven't heard from them, so I'm working for Hillary," said Lynch, a senior figure in New York's black political establishment who's worked for Clinton in the past. "That's where I was going to end up anyhow."
"This is all about loyalty and the strength of relationships that the Clintons have engendered over the years," said Basil Smikle, another black New York political consultant who used to work for Clinton, and supports her candidacy. "It's going to be hard to look them in the face and say, 'I can't support you.' "
Clinton, for her part, appears to have inherited her husband's deep African-American support. Toni Morrison called him the "first black president," and it was the unflinching support of many black Democrats, perhaps more than anything else, that carried him through impeachment. And despite the deafening buzz about Obama's candidacy, Sen. Clinton has held her own in the polls.
In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in mid-January, Clinton received 53 percent of African-Americans' support; Obama received 27 percent. The poll also found 85 percent of blacks view Clinton favorably, while 12 percent view her unfavorably. Only 59 percent of African-Americans said they had a favorable opinion of Obama, to 19 percent with an unfavorable opinion.
"Obama doesn't have Hillary or Bill Clinton's track record in our community," said Weldon Latham, a Washington lawyer and fund-raiser close to the Clintons. "I'm looking to hear what Mr. Obama has to say about how he's going to make this country better for African- Americans, other than the obvious benefit of him being a role model."
Obama has made moves both toward positioning himself as the black candidate and away from that label. He appeared in New York recently at a conference led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and appeared to claim Jackson's mantle.
"I would not be here the same way that many of the businesses would not be here, had it not been for 1984, had it not been for 1988," Obama said, referring to black business owners at the event.
But Obama, who has repeatedly called on Americans to look past racial politics, has an ambivalent relationship with the civil rights movement, on which Jackson's candidacy was based.
"He's always given Rev. Jackson credit for knocking down doors and raising ceilings. He doesn't distance himself at all," said Frank Watkins, Jackson's 1988 political director and an aide to Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill. "He embraces the tradition but he's not part of the establishment."
Indeed, outside Chicago, where he and Jackson both live and where Obama's wife, Michelle, grew up with Jackson's children, Obama has weak ties both to the civil rights generation of black leaders and to the black political establishment. And Obama's inner circle of campaign staff is largely white, though a second round of campaign hires carefully included two African-American advisers, including a second pollster and an Obama law school classmate who will be a policy adviser.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, meanwhile, has already emerged as a thorn in Obama's side. He told The Politico that none of the 2008 candidates has addressed the civil rights agenda -- including poverty and police brutality -- to his satisfaction, and that he will decide whether to launch his own presidential campaign in April. He also resisted Obama's rhetorical tendency to paint himself as a new figure for a new generation.
"He and I are contemporaries and he and I are laboring at the same time in the same situation," said Sharpton, who said he plans to meet Obama, Clinton and another Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., in Washington Thursday.
The contest for the black elite could shape the way Obama emerges before the national audience, and the way he plays in the first two contests in the overwhelmingly white states of Iowa and New Hampshire. And the example of Jackson offers little guidance. In 1984, most of the black establishment backed Walter Mondale. Jackson's racially animated campaign still won overwhelmingly among African-American voters.
"The grassroots basically ran (the black leadership) over in '84, and in '88 they all went with Jackson," recalled Watkins. As for Obama, Watkins said, the tension between ethnic pride and mass appeal "is the line he has to walk."