The American people have decided that President Obama should be given another term in office to continue leading the nation toward economic recovery and expanded opportunity for all. Amid the rancor of the 2012 campaign, an electorate that was focused on the economy – and presented with two starkly different visions for fixing it – chose to support the President’s program aimed at balanced deficit reduction, job growth, health care reform and public investment in education, technology and infrastructure.

While Governor Romney fell short of creating a winning coalition, we commend him and his family for their spirited and enduring commitment to public service and to the very highest ideals of our nation during this hard fought campaign.  We hope and trust that his party will continue its quest to establish a vision and message that will resonate with people of all races and from all segments of society.
 

View the entire press release by clicking the link below.

Before coming of age as a student at Hampton University, Carl Gray was a staunch, frequently lone defender of his conservative values. Ask him to recall a specific time where classmates or friends really challenged or debated him on his politics, he can’t remember one -- because a teacher or administrator always got in the way to defend liberal policies and the fellow students that believed them.

“That in itself was discouraging to know that teachers and professors wouldn't even allow for students to have their own discussions regarding political beliefs,” said Gray. “It was 'My way or the highway' in those classes. You either agree with the liberal philosophy or face the wrath. I often felt that I was being indoctrinated rather than taught. I actually learned more on my own, by reading both sides and making my own conclusion.”

Gray’s story is a common one on historically black college campuses around the country. As terms like "redistricting," "job creation" and "equal opportunity" hover around the culture of African Americans and their vote, a growing number of HBCU students and young alumni are supporting conservative values. It is a counter-cultural revolution in the face of traditional politics championed by black college students, but a throwback to the values that conservative HBCU students and alums say aren’t far from what black colleges have always promoted, and need for future progress.

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The increase of HBCU students and alums identifying as conservative or Republican is consistent with an uptick in black participation within the Republican Party overall.

In an August 2012 study by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the number of black delegates participating in the Republican National Convention increased 20.5 percent from 2008, with 47 delegates comprising 2.1 percent of the total delegation and up from 39 delegates who appeared at the 2008 RNC Convention in Minneapolis.

According to The Joint Center, which has surveyed black Republican participation since 1984, conservative partisanship dropped from nearly 15 percent in 2004 to just over seven percent in the 2008 presidential election.


Read more at The Huffington Post.

While pundits and Obama supporters were moaning Thursday morning about how Mitt Romney gained momentum by aggressively going after the president in their first debate, fact-checkers were busy sorting out the truth from half-truth from outright inaccuracies.

Romney, it appears, certainly had more swagger, but Obama had stronger command of the facts.

The Republican nominee rejected parts of his own tax plan, denying he intended to increase tax breaks only for the rich. He also failed to respond with details when asked where he would get the money from to cut taxes for all Americans, increase defense spending and not increase the deficit.

His quick answer was he would put more Americans to work in better paying jobs, which would mean more people paying taxes, which would help close the gap.

Romney’s advisers before the debate essentially told him to stick with jabbing the president, tagging Obama with the still struggling aspects of the economy and not get mired down in the details. Leave the policy wonk patter to Obama and appeal to emotion.

Clearly, the plan worked, at least for a night.
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In an interview last month, David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said that Obama and the Democrats had not done a good job of making clear how the Romney plan would hurt Americans, especially the poor and people of color, even during Obama’s acceptance of the Democratic Party’s nomination at this year’s convention.

The Democrats, Bositis said, did a terrible job, “including Obama—his worst performance is not talking about how much he’s done…”

Read more at the Atlanta Black Star.

While advocates of voter identification laws say the goal is to prevent fraud at the polls, Rep. Elijah Cummings insists that what is really at work is voter suppression during a campaign that promises to be a tighter than ever race for the presidency.

“As many as one in four African-American voters, more than one in six Hispanic voters, and about one in ten eligible voters overall do not possess a current and valid government-issued photo ID,” wrote Cummings in a press release Sept. 18, citing a NYU School of Law Brennan Center for Justice analysis of a voter rights bill he co-introduced with 13 House of Representatives members.

The bill, introduced as the America Votes Act of 2012 by Cummings and Rep. Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), targets the drive spearheaded by Republican opponents of President Obama to require voters to produce government issued identification at the time votes are cast.

Read more at The Afro.

One way to think about this year's election is as a contest between the impact of a sour economy (advantage Romney) and the power of the nation's shifting demographics (advantage Obama).

Put simply, the groups that support President Barack Obama most strongly — blacks, Hispanics, young people, unmarried women — have been growing as a share of the electorate. Those who support Mitt Romney the most — white working men and older people — have not.

This demographic tide is so strong that some Democrats came away from their 2008 victory feeling that a political reordering was in the works that could be as important as the New Deal realignment that ushered in a generation of Democratic strength after the Great Depression.

The Great Recession put a deep dent in that hope of theirs, as it soured most other optimism around America.

But now both Republicans and Democrats see that the demographic tide is still running. But it is running into the effects of the bad economy.

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The Republican Party says delegates aren't asked to identify their race, so they don't know how many are black. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which has been counting just that since 1974, said Thursday there are at least 47 black delegates, or about 2.1 percent.

Read more at Google News.

From the convention stage here, the Republican Party has tried to highlight its diversity, giving prime speaking slots to Latinos and blacks who have emphasized their party’s economic appeal to all Americans.

But they have delivered those speeches to a convention hall filled overwhelmingly with white faces, an awkward contrast that has been made more uncomfortable this week by a series of racial headaches that have intruded on the party’s efforts to project a new level of inclusiveness.

The tensions come amid a debate within the GOP on how best to lure new voters. The nation’s shifting demographics have caused some Republican leaders to worry not only about the party’s future but about winning in November, particularly in key swing states such as Virginia and Nevada.

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...despite a speaker lineup in Tampa that includes Artur Davis, a black former Democratic congressman; former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice; and Utah congressional candidate Mia Love, who would be the party’s first black congresswoman if she won in November, just 2 percent of convention delegates are black.

That’s according to an analysis by David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Bositis also said that only two members of the 165-member RNC are black and that none of the leaders of the committees responsible for drafting the GOP platform and adopting the convention rules are black.

“This Republican Party base is white, aging and dying off,” he said.

Read more at The Washington Post.

The Joint Center for Political and Economic studies has released its quadrennial report, Blacks and the 2012 Republican National Convention, showing there are at least 47 African Americans among this year’s GOP convention delegates, or 2.1 percent of the total in Tampa.

The Joint Center’s Convention Guide provides a comprehensive look at African Americans, their voting patterns and preferences and their relationship as voting citizens to the Republican Party. It contains historical data about black voting patterns in recent decades and focuses on states where the black vote has the potential to affect the outcome of the presidential election as well as several Senate contests.

Read more by downloading the full press release below.

The 2008 Presidential election was an historic occasion for African Americans, when for the first time, an African American was elected President.  This year, President Obama is seeking a second term, and there is no reason to expect any change in black voting patterns.  President Obama will almost certainly receive strong black support on November 6.  The Republicans’ nominee, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has little history with African Americans.  Further, the growing influence of the anti-black Tea Party within the GOP makes political appeals to African Americans difficult for any Republican office-seeker.  Finally, Romney’s Mormon faith is off-putting to many African Americans since for much of their history, Mormons held blacks to be inferior to whites.  The divide between African Americans and the Republican Party, once so narrow, has become a chasm.

This guide details the range of participation by African Americans in the Republican Party, the geographical and partisan dimensions of the black vote in recent years, and black voters’ attitudes toward many issues that may be significant in the fall campaign. The information will be of interest to political activists and election watchers, as well as to scholars of American politics. Moreover, by better appreciating their own capacity to be influential, black Republicans, despite their low numbers among the voting population, will nonetheless be better able to use what influence they have in pursuit of their public policy interests.

Mia Love is not a household name. But ask any savvy Republican here, and they’ll tell you the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, is one of the party’s political phenoms. Love, 37, is a congressional candidate for Utah’s 4th district. More importantly, she’s a black Mormon with sterling Tea Party credentials. This is the sort of improbable resume that earns you a coveted speaking slot on the convention’s first night — even when you’re down by double digits in one of the most conservative states in the U.S.

When Love took the stage in Tampa Tuesday night, the Utah delegation roared to life, whipping orange Love 4 Utah towels like rabid football fans. Even Stephen Sandstrom, a veteran of the state legislature whom Love beat for the nomination, looked gratified as she drew standing ovations. Love “says a lot about the state of Utah and about where we are as a country,” says Sandstrom, who hastened to add that he was a big supporter. “She’s combating stereotypes about what it means to be a Republican. We’re a big tent.”

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The diversity pageant is a timeworn tactic at Republican conventions. Soul singers performed at the 2000 convention in Philadelphia, when George W. Bush sought to bring more minority voters into the GOP fold. The number of black delegates peaked at 167 in 2004, 16.7% percent of the overall total. But it plummeted again in 2008, and this year’s confab in Tampa drew just 46 black delegates, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. According to Pew, 87% of Republicans are white, a figure that has held steady since 2000.

Read more at TIME.

From the convention site in immigrant-heavy Florida to the multi-hued faces that will be visible on stage over the next several days, Republicans are clearly courting minority voters — particularly Latinos.

But as the television news cameras broadcast sweeping shots of delegates at the Republican National Convention, something else will be visible too: a sea of red, white and blue apparel — and white faces.

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This year, 46 Republican delegates are African-American, or about 2 percent of the total, according to the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. That is up from 36 in 2008, which was the lowest number in 40 years, but far less than the 167 black delegates in 2004, which was the highest since 1912, said David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center.

The Joint Center does not track Latino or other minority delegates, but the Republican convention is likely to have more Hispanic delegates than African Americans, he said.

Bositis found that 26 percent of the 4,000-plus delegates to the 2012 Democratic National Convention are African-American. He estimates that at least 40 percent of the Democratic delegates will be from minority groups.

Bositis said the GOP needs to broaden its appeal to minority voters or face irrelevance in the coming years as America becomes more diverse.

Read more at the Dayton Daily News.