In Democratic Election Ads in South, a Focus on Racial Scars New York Times//JEREMY W. PETERS//OCTOBER 29, 2014 In the final days before the election, Democrats in the closest Senate races across the South are turning to racially charged messages — invoking Trayvon Martin’s death, the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and Jim Crow-era segregation — to jolt African-Americans into voting and stop a Republican takeover in Washington. The images and words they are using are striking for how overtly they play on fears of intimidation and repression. And their source is surprising. The effort is being led by national Democrats and their state party organizations — not, in most instances, by the shadowy and often untraceable political action committees that typically employ such provocative messages. In North Carolina, the “super PAC” started by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, ran an ad on black radio that accused the Republican candidate, Thom Tillis, of leading an effort to pass the kind of gun law that “caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.” In Georgia, Democrats are circulating a flier warning that voting is the only way “to prevent another Ferguson.” It shows two black children holding cardboard signs that say “Don’t shoot.” The messages are coursing through the campaigns like a riptide, powerful and under the surface, largely avoiding television and out of view of white voters. That has led Republicans to accuse Democrats of turning to race-baiting in a desperate bid to win at the polls next Tuesday. “They have been playing on this nerve in the black community that if you even so much as look at a Republican, churches will start to burn, your civil rights will be taken away and young black men like Trayvon Martin will die,” said Michael Steele, a former chairman of the Republican Party. “The reality of it is, the Democrats realize that their most loyal constituency is not as loyal as they once were.” Democrats say Republicans need to own their record of passing laws hostile to African-American interests on issues like voting rights. The decision to use such overt appeals reflects just how much they are relying on black voters in the states in the old Confederacy, where key Senate races could decide which party controls the chamber. Democrats are defending vulnerable incumbents in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina. And if they lose more than one of those races without picking up an open seat in Georgia, their odds of holding on to the majority will shrink considerably. One way to hang on is to increase the share of the black vote that typically turns out in a midterm election. To do so, Democrats are seizing on racial mistrust and unease, the same complicated emotions often used against them in the South. The attacks have been most aggressive in North Carolina, where Democrats have said they need to raise the share of the electorate that is African-American to 21 percent, from 19 percent in the last midterm election in 2010, to prevail over Republicans, who control both chambers of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion. The group started by Mr. Reid, Senate Majority PAC, ran the ad on black radio that Republicans said all but accused Mr. Tillis, the Republican speaker of the State House, of killing Mr. Martin, an unarmed black teenager who was fatally shot in Florida in 2012. In the ad, the announcer reads through a list of policies Mr. Tillis supported that blacks are likely to find offensive, like curtailing early voting in the state. And then it turns more ominous. “Tillis even led the effort to pass the type of ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws that caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin,” the announcer says. The music playing in the background abruptly stops. Republicans have slammed the ad as race-baiting. “Have you heard this race-hustling Kay Hagan ad paid for by Harry Reid’s super PAC?” a new radio ad paid for by a conservative group asks, referring to the Democratic incumbent. “Probably not. Because they’re not running it on this station.” Though Mr. Tillis was the speaker of the State Assembly at the time the law passed, he was not an ardent supporter of it. One local gun-rights group criticized him for not being supportive enough at the time. A spokesman for Senate Majority PAC, Ty Matsdorf, defended the message. “Our ad focuses on an issue that was the subject of national attention and debate and is important to voters across the spectrum in North Carolina,” he said. At a campaign rally over the weekend for Senator Hagan, one of her supporters, Alma Adams, who is in the State Legislature, said, “We need to send Uncle Thom — Tillis, that is — home.” Ms. Hagan’s campaign has often referred to remarks in which Mr. Tillis appeared to equate reparations for slavery with social welfare programs. Governments created such public assistance programs, he said in 2007, based in part on the “belief that we should provide additional reparations” to those whose ancestors were enslaved. In addition, at a black church in Fayetteville, leaflets with a grainy image of a lynching have appeared, warning voters that if Ms. Hagan loses, President Obama will be impeached. Similar messages are reaching black voters in Arkansas, where Senator Mark Pryor, a second-term Democrat, is up for re-election, and Georgia, where the retirement of Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, has given Democrats a shot at the seat. In Arkansas, voters are opening mailboxes to find leaflets with images of the Ferguson protests and the words: “Enough! Republicans are targeting our kids, silencing our voices and even trying to impeach our president.” The group distributing them is Color of Change, a grass-roots civil rights organization. In Georgia, the state Democratic Party is mixing themes of racial discrimination with appeals to rally behind the only black man elected president. “It’s up to us to vote to protect the legacy of the first African-American president,” one flier reads. Another invokes Ferguson. “If you want to prevent another Ferguson in their future,” the leaflet says over a picture of two young black children, “vote. It’s up to you to make change happen.” For many African-Americans, feelings of persecution — from voter ID laws, aggressive police forces and a host of other social problems — are hard to overstate. And they see no hyperbole in the attacks. “It’s not race-baiting; it’s actually happening,” said Jaymes Powell Jr., an official in the North Carolina Democratic Party’s African-American Caucus. “I can’t catch a fish unless there’s a worm on the hook.” Video | A Push for Black Votes in North CarolinaThe tactics being employed by Democrats in North Carolina as the black turnout there could decide which party controls the Senate. mobile.nytimes/video/us/politics/100000003202637/a-push-for-black-votes-in-north-carolina.html
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:12:00 +0000