Editor's note: With the 2012 Republican National Convention about to begin in Tampa, CNN asked veteran insiders Donna Brazile, Democratic strategist and former campaign chair for Vice President Al Gore's presidential bid, and Ari Fleischer, Republican communications expert and former press secretary for President George W. Bush, to give us their tips on how to navigate a political convention. Here are Brazile's tips.

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2. Watch the media for reports that track delegate diversity.
The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has been tracking the ratio of minority delegates at the conventions for 40 years. In 2008, it found that 36 of the 2,380 Republican delegates were African-American. Women delegates were at a 40-year low. Another nearly all-white convention will make it hard for the Republicans to sell themselves as a majority party.

Read more at CNN.

Joint Center President and CEO Ralph Everett submitted a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates to express his concern about the lack of journalists of color serving as moderators for the 2012 presidential debates.

"I write to express the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies' deep concern that the Commission on Presidential Debates has not selected any journalists of color to moderate any of the presidential debates being broadcast this election season," he writes. "We respectfully ask the Commission to reconsider its approach for selecting moderators."

He also writes, "We also ask that the Commission take measures to remedy this oversight by adding more debates to the calendar. As such, we ask it to reconsider its decision to deny Univision’s request for a forum to be hosted by two of the nation’s most respected journalists--Jorge and Maria Elena. We further ask the Commission to pursue similar initiatives with other media outlets boasting large audiences of African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and other people of color."

To read the full letter, click the download icon below.

In advance of the November election, Univision Communications and a civil rights group stepped up a campaign to create an additional forum for presidential candidates to address issues important to Latinos and African Americans — and to get a person of color into the presidential debate schedule.

This week, the Commission on Presidential Debates selected Jim Lehrer of PBS News Hour, Bob Schieffer of CBS News, Candy Crowley of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News as moderators for this fall's debates among candidates for president and vice president.

"It has long been the practice of the television industry to avoid putting people of color in front of the camera for fear of running afoul of ... mass market concerns," Ralph B. Everett, chief executive of the civil rights group Joint Center for Political and Economic Studios, wrote in a letter Thursday to Janet H. Brown, executive director on the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Read more at the Los Angeles Times.

The performance by the Rev. William Owens at the National Press Club last week was enough to make a cynic blush. In a nearly empty room, as the C-SPAN cameras rolled, Owens, a Tennessee minister and self-proclaimed leader of the civil rights movement called out the president for his changed position on same sex marriage.

“I didn’t march one inch, one foot, one yard, for a man to marry a man, and a woman to marry a woman,” he said.

Claiming to speak for thousands, he connected the prevalence of same-sex marriage to the collapse of the African-American family. And he threatened the president with a widespread revolt by black voters on Election Day. “He has not done a smart thing,” Owens said.

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“I would place the odds of African Americans defecting the president as about the same as the odds of an asteroid hitting the Earth and wiping out all human life,” says David Bositis at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. “It’s not going to happen.”


Read more at The Washington Post.

When President Barack Obama arrives in New Orleans on Wednesday to speak before the National Urban League annual conference, he will touch down in a state where his party, less than a month before the qualifying deadline, has yet to find a congressional candidate for any district outside the black-majority seat held by Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans.

For Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans, who seized control of the party from Buddy Leach in April, it is a year for "grassroots rebuilding." But so too was last year, when the party failed to field a single major candidate for any statewide office, including governor.

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"Black voters and elected officials have less influence now than at any time since the civil rights era," David Bositis, an analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, wrote in a stark analysis late last year. It is the culmination of nearly a half-century process that began with the dismantling of Jim Crow, the empowerment of black voters and an explosion in black representation, but that now finds its ironic coda in a once-dominating Democrat Party transformed into a largely African-American enterprise that is only occasionally able to scrounge enough white votes to compete effectively outside black districts. The result has been the loss of legislative control in every Southern state save Arkansas.

Read more at the Times-Picayune.

The cliche "every vote counts" is sure to get a workout this election season. A new report from the National Urban League says the African-American vote could play a critical role in November. Host Michel Martin talks with Chanelle Hardy of the National Urban League and David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Read more at National Public Radio.

President Obama pleased gays and lesbians when he endorsed same-sex marriage. He thrilled women when he signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

But when it comes to African Americans, a group that gave Obama 96 percent of its votes, there is disappointment over what many believe is the president's failure to address their concerns.

With black unemployment at 14 percent - nearly double the rate among whites - and a steep rise in rise in poverty and incarceration rates, many blacks are expressing frustration at the president's leadership.

While no one expects African Americans to make an exodus to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, there is concern among Democrats over whether Obama will benefit from as large a turnout and the same level of enthusiasm as he enjoyed in 2008.

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David Bositis, who studies African American voting patterns at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said Obama will need strong black support to keep several states in "the Democratic column."


Read more at the Pasedena Star-News.

President Obama pleased gays and lesbians when he endorsed same-sex marriage. He thrilled women when he signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

But when it comes to African Americans, a group that gave Obama 96 percent of its votes, there is disappointment over what many believe is the president’s failure to address their concerns.

With black unemployment at 14 percent — nearly double the rate among whites — and a steep rise in rise in poverty and incarceration rates, many blacks are expressing frustration at the president’s leadership.

While no one expects African Americans to make an exodus to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, there is concern among Democrats over whether Obama will benefit from as large a turnout and the same level of enthusiasm as he enjoyed in 2008.

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David Bositis, who studies African American voting patterns at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, said Obama will need strong black support to keep several states in “the Democratic column.”


Read more at Silicon Valley Mercury News.

“Swing state” is something North Carolinians have been hearing a lot lately.  There’s no avoiding the importance the campaigns of both President Obama and his presumptive challenger Mitt Romney place on the state and its 15 electoral votes. As tightening polls and numerous candidate visits suggest, predicting the November result is not easy.

But for the president to repeat his surprising 2008 win here – by a slim, just over 14,000-vote margin – he will have to target, expand on and get out his strongest base. That would be minority, particularly African American, voters.

What will it take for the president to make North Carolina swing his way in November? Will the Democrats’ decision to hold their national convention in Charlotte, the state’s largest city, affect enthusiasm and turnout? How much does the president’s 2012 success depend on the rise of North Carolina’s minority population? And will the economy trump everything?

“A lot of politics is demographics these days, more than ever,” said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Read more at The Grio.

Michael Strautmanis, deputy assistant to President Barack Obama, was ready to go home as was the other dozens of State of the Union watchers packed into the boardroom at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Despite the obvious fatigue of a long day; plus the intensity of watching President Obama’s hour-long State of the Union speech, there was a late-night agenda on the table. Strautmanis and other White House representatives were on assignment. Their mission was to – not only break down the President’s speech – for the Black political, grassroots, business and civic leaders in the room, but to make plain the President’s plan for the Black community in coming months – especially as it pertains to economics.

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Ralph Everett, president/CEO of the Joint Center, a Black think-tank, seated at the right of Strautmanis, moderated the discussion, when continued to close to 11 p.m. Only 40 people had been invited to the meeting, but the center had to open up multiple rooms and even turn some people away after more than 140 responded, he said.

This shows that people want to “participate in the process. This was just one way to do that,” he said. The other way will be to vote in November he said.


Read more at The Seattle Medium, or The Louisiana Weekly.