While almost all of the attention of the political world was dedicated to the Supreme Court last week, Charlie Rangel quietly won the Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District. Rangel’s primary fight, along with those of Eddie Bernice Johnson in Texas’s 30th district and John Conyer’s upcoming primary in Michigan’s 13th district, are among the most noteworthy involving African-American US House Representative incumbents.
These three representatives are indicative of a troubling trend in the area of leadership in the African-American community. The next generation of political leaders is not being groomed from generation to generation. Indeed, the average age of the members of the CBC in the US House of Representatives is 61 – 4 full years above the average for the general population in the House. Unfortunately, there are no African-Americans currently serving in the US Senate. Outside of the White House (and several mid-tier positions in the executive branch), there is a stark absence of fresh African-American leadership in Washington. The members of the CBC are getting older. The President has fewer African Americans in his first term cabinet that can vault to prominent political careers (perhaps Eric Holder and Lisa Jackson) versus the cabinet of George Bush (Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powel, Rod Paige, and Alphonso Jackson).
TOC writes this in the spirit of bipartisanship – as in it is not meant to be a direct criticism of one party and a promotion of the other. Of course, as a conservative, TOC laments the stark discrepancy in the number of African-Americans that choose to be Democrat versus Republican. Numerous pieces have been written about the discrepancy in numbers between African-American conservatives and Democrats; I would prefer not to tackle that here. With that said, there is no question that African-American Democrats must do a much better job of developing their next generation of leaders. Conservative African-Americans disagree with Democrats on how to solve the health gap, wealth gap and education gap from which so many African-Americans suffer, but we hopefully are steadfastly focused on that end. That end should be just as important to African-American Democrats. It requires grooming the next round of political leaders and knowing when to surrender power and allow these leaders to develop. The seeming unwillingness of some African-American Democrats to do so is disturbing. It makes one suspect that these Democrats are paying lip service to helping their constituencies and are actually far more concerned with their individual legacies.
TOC came to this conclusion by following Eddie Bernice Johnson’s primary fight in South Dallas. The race started with a young, well-groomed Taj Clayton and a state senator from Texas – Mallory Caraway – vying to oust Johnson. Johnson had just ridden her way through several scandals (links here and here). How is it that Johnson, who violated the terms of a foundation scholarship, could survive and get 70% of the vote in the primary against a well-groomed Harvard-educated lawyer with close ties to the 2008 Obama campaign? There are some political realities, as the non-Johnson vote was split between Clayton and Caraway, but together they only received 30% of the vote. It definitely did not help that Barack Obama swooped in and endorsed Johnson, more than likely for political reasons (a new Democrat in that seat would have less seniority in the House and Johnson gave Obama unquestioned loyalty, allegedly). Why else would Obama give a campaign-ending endorsement against such a well-polished up-and-comer? In Michigan, John Conyers has been mostly quiet on the biggest scandal hitting his political family – the indictment of his wife Monica Conyers for bribery. Despite Conyer’s age and family’s legal troubles, Obama endorsed him as well. As far as Charlie Rangel is concerned, the 82-year-old was not endorsed by President Obama, but the White House gave no clear signal about not supporting the censured congressman. Maybe prudent politics call for sitting on the fence when Clyde Williams has a scandal-free experienced political background, without the name recognition to win.
President Obama has been troublingly ineffective in this area. The aforementioned endorsements of aged CBC members in lieu of up-and-comers are dreadful enough, but it gets worse. In a move that got far too little conversation in national and African-American circles, the Obama White House gave early support to New York Kirsten Gillibrand over Harold Ford, Jr., another up-and-coming young and incredibly potent African-American Democrat. Why would an Obama White House go so far out of its way to support Gillibrand even before Ford announced a run against her? Political pundits concluded that Obama was swayed by Ford’s centrist social views, but in light of the subject of this post, the Obama administration clearly was not concerned with supporting who could have been only the fourth African-American elected US senator (remember that Roland Burris was appointed) since Reconstruction. How could a President who so heavily depended on African-American votes be so ineffective in grooming the next generation of African-American leaders? The supposedly-racist George Bush had more senior African-American advisors (as stated earlier), and this administration goes out of its way to impede the development of the next generation of African-American leaders. Unfortunately, this is a trend for which Obama may never have to answer.
In closing, TOC will repeat something very important. The end needs to be bigger than political careers. There is no question that, no matter what side of the political aisle one lies, closing the gaps African-Americans face as a community is a multi-generational task. It seems this task is secondary for some. If Democrats believe social justice and entitlements are part of the solution, we can agree to disagree as conservatives; however, I am troubled that the John Lewises, Jim Clyburns, John Conyerses and Charlie Rangels of the world are too worried about their own power to let someone else lead while the Obamas of the world are too worried about politics as usual – almost to the point that our mutual end is reprioritized off of their radar screens.