How the GOP Can Wage Urban Warfare

Recently, Michael Steele spoke about the importance of the GOP addressing the problems facing blacks and urban America. The effort to repair the GOP’s fractured relationship in urban areas must start as soon as possible.

Recently, at a packed house during the National Association for Colored People (NAACP) Convention held in New York City, Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele spoke about a joint-venture with the RNC & the NAACP.  The hope is to find common ground in addressing some of the major problems facing both blacks and urban America. Michael Steele began his speech with a litany of sobering statistics on the fate of blacks in America. As he ended the speech he noted that instead of reading a recent study he was actually quoting John F. Kennedy from the 1960’s, sharply underscoring the fact that while there may be an African-American president, there is still much that has not been done for African-Americans. The NAACP working with the RNC will indeed be a unique change of course given the often testy relationship between the two institutions. It is not without precedent given that many of the NAACP’s first defenders and early founders were registered Republicans. The future relationship between these two groups will be an interesting one to watch. Will it fade out as soon as Steele leaves his chairmanship?  Will other RNC chairmen participate in future events? Can the two groups work together on an urban agenda that encourages self-empowerment? Nevertheless, a more interesting question is: How is the Republican Party doing with regards to reaching out to minorities and urban folks in general? What has the message been in the past and what will it look like in the future? I believe that at the heart of the GOP’s failure to effectively reach out has been an unwillingness to mention race or demographics with regards to any type of legislation that may be favorable to minorities or urban America in general. This is to say that we do not take credit where credit is due, often giving Democrats the opportunity to claim such ideas as their own.  Recently John H. McWhorter, a Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow in Public Policy and a Contributing Editor to City Journal, stated on a recent radio interview that Republicans don’t take credit for the things they do to benefit black America. He stated that Bush and many other Republican presidents had polices implemented that helped minorities and urban areas but never took credit for those policies. They preferred to highlight other policies while allowing the Democrats to take credit for their ideas. One example of this theft is the Democrats increasing willingness to accept charter schools. Democrats knowing that charter schools are popular are trying to take credit for this implementation also. It’s actually one of the hardest polices for them to take credit for because Republicans invoked race when selling charter schools. The GOP argued earlier that charter schools would benefit minority and urban communities and made this very clear.  Amongst a host of other things, however, we have not made it clear who its beneficiaries will be. A solution to much of this idea-stealing would be the creation of a broad taskforce and initiative working with a coalition of urban and minority Republicans around the nation. Imagine a team of urban Republicans from around the nation: from the Bronx, Harlem, Los Angeles and Detroit coming together and offering up strategies and suggestions for winning the hearts and minds of urban and minority voters. Once thetaskforce gets the results in, it could send the results over to Michael Steele. Michael Steele, in working with the RNC, could create an urban Republican website which would come up with practical solutions on a host of urban topics. These topics could include such issues as transportation, education, gas prices and housing just to name a few. Also, the taskforce could request a panel of urban Republican experts in various fields who could offer some suggestions for improving urban America. Another important factor is using the voter vault to empower those already registered as Republicans. How many registered Republicans are in Harlem or the Bronx or Detroit? The RNC and state chairs could begin reaching out to these Republicans in the inner-cities. While it is true that most of these areas are heavily Democratic, there are still hundreds and thousands of registered Republicans and independents in these areas. One suggestion for those interested in this issue is to read a study entitled Blacks & the Republican Party by the Joint Center for Economic Studies. The document is a great start in chronicling where we, as a party, went wrong. Perhaps it can demonstrate where we can turn the tide. In order for the GOP to win in urban America a few hard systemic questions must be asked and analyzed.  The questions asked should be strong questions. For instance:

Who is responsible in each state for minority and urban outreach? What type of accountability structure is in place to determine if the State is doing the job or the task assigned? Is an urban and a minority coalition team in place? What are the goals of such a team? Does the party have a strong nationwide urban platform? Has the party figured out why many black Republicans who run for office do poorly in polls? What modules could be used to better propel a candidate? Have we begun to effectively create an online strategy to use micro-targeting via Facebook and blackplanet.com? Are we targeting the young?

The future of African Americans and other minorities in the GOP should be focused primarily on young people. We must, therefore, make sure that in every policy decision that essentially our message is targeted toward the youth. In other words, we want The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’s, Carlton Banks, not his parents. Another, more important, issue deals with resources. Are we, as a party, going to put our money where our mouth is by creating a special fund for minority and urban outreach? If such a fund were created would it have an advisory board and an auditor to see what metrics work and what did not? Also, we must ask:

Have we built effective candidate farms in which scouts find up and coming talent? Do we stand behind them should these urban and minority candidates choose to run? Or do we encourage them to run and hide behind them just to see what happens? Have we started a school to train minority and/or urban candidates before they seek office? Have we made sure that urban minority GOP state groups have functioning websites? Are state chairs taking their responsibilities seriously by making outreach a real goal? If so, are they funding such outreaches? Are the outreaches effective? These and many other issues must be considered.

Given that state chairs have a great deal of power in our party, 70% percent of the work in this area will be up to them; not the RNC. A suggestion would be to allow the RNC to run all such operations if the state chairs neglect to do so. The building blocks for repairing the GOP’s fractured relationship in urban areas must start as soon as possible. It will take all sectors of the party coming together and making firm commitments to change. Whether we as a party are up to this daunting and Herculean task still remains to be seen. Let’s hope for everyone’s sake that as a party we pull through. Let’s remember also that outreach is not pandering its being responsible for taking action to grow our party in communities where we are currently under-represented.