The Washington Post is reporting a story that ticks me off. It seems some African American leaders have raised the issue of where some campaign donations to Michael Steele are coming from. A recent fundraiser for the candidate for the Senate in Maryland was hosted by Floyd Brown's Citizens United Political Victory Fund. Ok, if you're all done with saying, "Who?" now, apparently this man had a role in producing the "Willie Horton" campaign ad that conventional wisdom credits with defeating Michael Dukakis.
The fundraiser thrown for Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele on Thursday night, while ordinary in most ways, struck some African American leaders as notable because of the host.
Unlike the dozens of high-dollar events across the country in his U.S. Senate bid, this event was thrown by the producer of the famous "Willie Horton" ad, the 1988 commercial that came to symbolize the cynical use of skin color as a political wedge.
It seemed a most unusual choice for Steele, the first African American elected to statewide office in Maryland and a Republican whose strategy for winning a Senate seat in a state dominated by Democrats has involved the aggressive courtship of black voters.
"Why would he go for money to those who have done us harm?" asked Elbridge James, a former leader of the NAACP's Montgomery County branch.
Steele said he sees nothing unusual about getting help from Floyd Brown's Citizens United Political Victory Fund. Brown produced the Willie Horton ad, which helped torpedo Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign by drawing attention to a weekend furlough program that released a black convicted murderer serving a life sentence.
Nor, Steele said, was there anything incongruous about donations he took from others who have offended black audiences in the past, including Republican Sens. Trent Lott (Miss.) and Conrad Burns (Mont.) as well as Alex Castellanos, the man behind the racially charged "White Hands" ad that then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) used to attack his black challenger.
It featured a close-up shot of a pair of white hands crumpling a letter as the narrator says, "You needed that job . . . but they had to give it to a minority."
I happen to remember the Willy Horton ad. I did not even recall Willy Horton was black until I read this story. Because the man's skin color was not what struck me about the ad. Releasing a convicted murderer on a weekend furlough so he could rob and rape was what angered me at the time. (Here's the Wikipedia entry on the whole issue).
As Steele points out later in the article, black Democrats have no problem accepting donations from Robert Byrd, the former klansman. Why is there a double standard? More importantly, why is this even an issue worth reporting?
“More importantly, why is this even an issue worth reporting?”
Because, it gives the racists at the WaPo a chance to insinuate that Steele’s supporters are presumed racists who use dirty tricks to defeat Lefty candidates. It’s a direct cheap shot at GOP candidate Steele, it invokes a long standing Lefty grievance, and it provides a shield behind which white guys at the WaPo can level a racist smear at a black man and get away with it.
Talk about “litmus test.”
Black are only allowed to be elected by Blacks with Black-friendly money in Black districts.
Sounds more like self imposed apartheid. But they are sticking to “the man.”