Buying the black vote

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Buying the black vote
Anniston’s candid new mayor sends a bizarre but useful message to Alabama and America

By: Glen Browder
The citizens of northeast Alabama were shocked last week when the new Anniston mayor-elect credited his race-tinged victory to buying the black vote.
“I bought into the black corruption in Anniston. And it worked.”

Gene Robinson, interviewed by the Anniston Star, articulated this outrageous statement on Wednesday after Tuesday’s upset of two-term mayor Chip Howell. Robinson claimed to have paid two local black activists $2,650 to round up African-American voters on his behalf; and he credited his 3-1 margin in predominantly black areas for the stunning 52-48 percent victory. (The black duo likewise confirmed their service to his campaign.)

Robinson then explained that he had been offered the black vote for a price during his unsuccessful campaign four years ago, but he had refused that opportunity. “I said no in 2004, but I wanted to win so bad this year,” he said.

Scarcely had these comments surfaced when both black and white citizens castigated their mayor-elect and he began backtracking. But the damage had been done in Anniston, a city with a population of 23,000, known as the Model City and forever footnoted with the burning of a freedom-rider bus in 1961. This new debacle — coming on the heels of other serious challenges in the town — has plunged Anniston into disgusted turmoil. As Anniston Star Commentary Editor Phillip Tutor lamented after reading Robinson’s comments, “Excuse me while I take a bath.”

I guess all of us need to take a bath, but we also need to understand that this incident may be no more nor less than a bizarre, brazen utterance that most Alabama citizens — black and white — find appalling and unacceptable. To put it bluntly, a neophyte politician foolishly blabbed about an unsavory trick-of-the-trade from old-style southern politics — winning the race-game with the help of African-Americans themselves.

Regardless of whether Robinson’s comments reflected simple foolishness, manipulation or corruption, he now serves as a bumbling symbol of hard history in Alabama. The Southern race game continues in some situations because of the fact that our region disproportionately bears the stubborn, discriminatory, overlapped imprint of the racial and economic past. This kind of politicking is particularly likely and obvious in areas with large numbers of poor blacks and poor whites, a significant continuance of class and caste tensions and opportunistic politicians. Under certain conditions, our legacy politics can produce ugly, cankerous, racial eruptions reminiscent of the olden days.

Anniston is not unique in this respect. We saw more serious transgressions in the campaign for Birmingham mayor last year. Uncivic incidents crop up regularly in Black Belt contests and statewide races.

I’ve been involved in Alabama politics a long time as a politician and political scientist, and I can attest personally to the fact that the activities Robinson referenced have long been part of our elections. White candidates routinely conduct special operations in reaching the African-American electorate. They use conventional methods — television, newspapers, radio, phone, mail and personal, door-to-door canvassing—to sway white voters; but they often count on black operatives and organizations to reach minority voters. The black campaigning usually involves group endorsements, candidate financing, mass hauling to the polls, and distribution of marked ballots at the voting place.

As a key African-American leader once advised me: “You can waste your money on TV if you want to, but our folk generally talk among themselves, in their churches and civil rights organizations, before casting a collective vote for their preferred candidates.” Another black leader explained to a newspaper reporter that years of exclusion had created all kinds of apathies and black participation would drop dramatically without special get-out-the-vote efforts. These activities are usually open and legitimate; and, contrary to public perception, they have contributed to biracial progress. However, sometimes they’re manipulative; and they can corrupt the democratic process.

Such operations are vital aspects of many campaigns in our region, but, in fact, this practice is just part of the broader reality of racial segregation and crass racial politics in the American historical experience. For example, one veteran politico, speaking of loose, unaccounted cash in voter-turnout efforts, said: “Street money will continue because it works. And it is now a deeply rooted custom in the African-American community, where you need incentives to combat a general apathetic attitude that it doesn’t matter who you elect, you’re going to get screwed anyway.”

Similar dealings — often involving outright corruption — have characterized the relationship between mainstream politicians and disadvantaged racial, religious, ethnic, social and economic minorities, in Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and smaller locales throughout the country. For years, these arrangements have been a standard chapter in the handbook for presidential election campaigns. Clearly, just as in the South, these practices sometimes demean American democracy.

Gene Robinson’s startling public remarks were embarrassing for his community, and his campaign revelations raised questions of serious impropriety. He thereby scratched open a festering scab among both white and black citizens, and the Model City must now deal somehow with its new mayor, its old problems, and biracial disgust. Who knows, perhaps the neophyte politician can turn this situation into an opportunity for candidly discussing a better future for Anniston.

As for the rest of us in Alabama and throughout America, we can all take a bath to cleanse ourselves of such tawdriness, but we might also reflect on this incident as a bizarre, brazen, sobering reminder of our shared and continuing legacy of hard racial history.


Glen Browder is a professor emeritus of political science and American democracy at Jacksonville State University and a former congressman from Alabama’s third
congressional district.