Black Democrats Debate Candidacies of Clinton, Obama

MIAMI _ At 9 a.m. Friday, after the two children had left for school, Guylene Berry hoped to make the decision in the quiet of her Miami Lakes home. She had tried before, given Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all this time and energy, pondering the promises, but the choice hadn’t gotten any easier.

Host of Koze Fanm, a Haitian radio program, Berry changed her mind in the car on her way to vote early. And again when she stood in line. Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. Back to Clinton.

“I voted for Hillary Clinton today. I am a single mother, so her views on employment, universal health care and the housing crisis appealed to me. But this was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made,” says Berry, 35, who cast a vote for the first time on Friday. “On the one hand I wanted to vote for a black American, a man who would give my children hope. On the other, women’s issues are close to my heart.”

That choice, that conversation has played out among black voters in churches and chatrooms, grocery stores and barber shops, among families, between best friends and sometimes even among strangers as Clinton and Obama emerged as front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Even the four board members of the Florida Courier, a small Florida weekly, were debating who was the most promising candidate for the national black agenda in a campaign that could nominate the first woman or first African American for president.

Both candidates are counting on significant African-American support as voters go to the polls Saturday in South Carolina and just days before the Florida primary.

“I think what our little board experienced mirrors what is going on all over the place,” said Courier Publisher Charles Cherry, of Plantation. “But it’s a good problem because for the first time I think blacks feel like we have viable candidates to choose from. This is an exciting time.”

With Obama poised to win the South Carolina primary _ bitterly unfolding along the racial divide _ more and more black Floridians, many of whom supported Clinton, are torn. Many supported Clinton because they earnestly believed Obama didn’t have a real chance, much like symbolic candidates Jesse Jackson and Shirley Chisholm in the past _ until his startling win in Iowa three weeks ago.

All of a sudden, a voting bloc long viewed as monolithic is divided between a name they know and an electable black candidate.

“You’re talking about choosing between the familiar and a new candidate promising generational change,” says Ron Walters, a University of Maryland political science professor and author of Freedom Is Not Enough. “This is an election in which America has a chance to be its best self, to get beyond race or gender.”

Black voters, who traditionally support Democrats, are critical to both candidates’ success.

If the primary were held today in Florida, Obama would get 48 percent of the black vote to Clinton’s 27 percent, according to a poll conducted for The Miami Herald this week by Schroth, Eldon & Associates.

Hillary and Bill Clinton enjoyed astonishingly high approval among blacks during his presidential administration. A black author once even referred to Bill Clinton as America’s first black president, a tongue-in-cheek comment that has returned, in all its strange hues, as voters, strategists and observers attempt to define exactly what is blackness and how it is measured.

Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, is promising a newly united America. All along the campaign trail, he has delivered electrifying speeches that have drawn comparisons to Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To be honest, this is a country divided by race, class, the economy, the war. It is divided socially and politically, and Obama is talking about changing all of that,” said financial consultant Lisa Rogers-Cherry, wife of Courier publisher Cherry and an Obama supporter. “We need someone entirely different in leadership.”

In Jacksonville, Stanley Burch sits in his store, CNN blaring on the television, trying to come up with a catchy phrase that will somehow capture the political moment. Something clever like: “Switched.”

He would slap it on a few T-shirts and sell it in his storefront, a tiny room packed with nostalgic knickknacks, on the northside of the city. He figures that’s the perfect phrase to explain the story of Clinton and Obama.

“There’s a lot of us who were going with Clinton. And then Obama won in Iowa and all of a sudden, you started thinking maybe a black man can win,” said Burch, 52, owner of Burch’s Variety Store. “At this point, I feel like we gotta acknowledge him.”

Same story two hours away in Eatonville near Orlando, where Joe Pinckney spent the afternoon taking down posters of Martin Luther King Jr. from the lamp posts lining Kennedy Boulevard, which runs through the tiny city’s downtown.

“I have been listening to the candidates talk about the issue and I think I am going with Obama,” says Pinckney, 54, who has proudly voted since he was 18. “I didn’t want to waste my vote, too hard to come by, but I now think he can win.”

Beyond race, Pinckney says he was most impressed with Obama’s longstanding stance against the war in Iraq.

“I have a nephew over there, and I want him home. We shouldn’t even be there and Obama has been saying that for a long time,” said Pinckney, who works for the city of Eatonville. “It would be nice to see the guy win.”

For black women the choice may not be so clear, with some feeling as strongly about gender as race.

In between stopping traffic for schoolchildren, crossing guard Annette Wallace, 49, talked about the hope represented by the campaign. After watching Obama and Clinton stump, deliver speeches and split caucus victories, Wallace is still absolutely undecided. She’s hoping to hear the right words by primary day Tuesday.

“I need to hear something better about what is going to be done about our economy,” says Wallace, who twice supported Bill Clinton. “I am excited a woman and a black man are running, but the economy issue is what is going to decide it for me.”

Some remain loyal to Clinton, who is considered a friend of the African American community.

“I am not making my choice based on race or gender. For me it’s all about experience. With the condition this country is in, I think we need someone who can come in and stabilize it,” says Terri Page, a Miami-Dade mortgage broker. “The work of the Clintons is proven.”

___

(c) 2008, The Miami Herald.

Visit The Miami Herald Web edition on the World Wide Web at http://www.herald.com/

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

_____

PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099):

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. 1053818