Race-baiting won’t win Chicago mayor race for Braun

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Once upon a time, in an election now seemingly far, far away, a Chicago-based politician managed to sufficiently persuade voters to transcend racial, ethnic and partisan boundaries in support of his candidacy. In one fell swoop, the election of Barack Obama held out the tantalizing promise of ushering in a post-racial era.

What a difference a few years makes.

Because no Chicago election is complete without heaping doses of undignified campaigning and accusations of race-baiting, the city’s hotly-contested mayor’s race has become even more controversial.

Congressman Danny Davis (D, Ill.) recorded a radio ad for former U.S. Senator and mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun, strongly implying that any blacks who fail to vote for the hand-selected “consensus black candidate” is basically “worse than an infidel.” For the uninitiated, the traitorous reference is drawn directly from the scripture (1 Timothy 5:8, to be exact). With President Obama’s former chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel leading the wide-open field, Braun’s supporters are nervous about Emanuel prevailing and splitting the black vote. So much for the post-racial age of harmonious political convergence that once appeared within reach.

Where to begin with this latest racially-tinged incident? First, it should be observed that Emanuel’s lack of support amongst the city’s self-appointed “black leadership” is perplexing at the very least. Given his role as a senior official to both the nation’s first African-American president — and a key aide to the figurative “first black president” — one would think that his candidacy wouldn’t be nearly as controversial as it is. But Chicago’s political machine has always been a bundle of contradictions.

But Danny Davis’ exhortation on behalf of Braun, and the implication that black voters who don’t support her bid are guilty of heresy, raises some very important and disturbing questions. First and foremost, how exactly does one define a “consensus black candidate” anyhow? And why does it seem as if that principle never seems to apply to blacks who chose to run as anything other than liberal Democrats?

The idea cuts to the heart of a long-simmering debate about the nature of black electoral voting patterns. In fact, the very idea is a founded upon a borderline offensive premise that all voters of color have an identical belief system inextricably linked to their race or ethnicity. If that were the case, black voters therefore have no option other than to rubber-stamp the wishes of self-described political kingmakers. Chicago voters should not be forced to have their votes commanded by political elites, and they should be free to vote for whomever they wish, without baseless attacks on their racial or ethnic authenticity.

Davis’ offensive remark is not only the height of race-baiting, it ignores the unpalatable realities of Braun’s candidacy. Let’s be frank: there’s a reason why Carol Moseley Braun is an ex-senator. Her extensive list of self-inflicted controversies began almost immediately after she was elected; depending on whom you ask, her troubles began even before she ascended to the Senate.
Braun rose to prominence as a hard-working state representative, but often found herself embroiled in accusations of self-dealing and patronage, the official currency of Chicago machine politics. Her recent professional and financial endeavors raise troubling questions about her judgment and leadership abilities. Some of her greatest hits include trying to obscure sexual harassment claims against her fiancé and campaign aide, and coddling a Nigerian dictator (the latter contributed to her defeat in 1998).

Most former federal lawmakers often go on to very lucrative careers in lobbying, or become elder-statesman: it says much about Braun’s personality and leadership skills that she’s become something decidedly different. Despite carving out a place in history as the first and last African-American woman to be elected to the Senate, it’s difficult to see anything other than a politician whose career is firmly entrenched in freefall. Braun’s penchant for gaffes and poor decisions has relegated her to political gadfly status, and virtually assures she’ll be little other than a footnote in Illinois politics.

The incoming mayor of Chicago will need to be a combination of Hercules, Solomon and Job as he (or she) confronts two of the city’s most intractable problems: endemic corruption and a declining though still shocking degree of violent crime that has roiled neighborhoods throughout Chicago. This means that voters — black or otherwise – are under no obligation to vote for anyone other than the best candidate, despite the machinations of the city’s self-appointed mouthpieces.

One of the major issues that frequently undermine black political aspirations is the dismaying, monolithic voting pattern that give Democrats virtually 100 percent of the black vote. That tendency also gives race-baiting politicos such as Danny Davis more cachet than they deserve. The net effect is that one major party is given free license to take black voters for granted, while the other is reluctant to compete for their attentions. Once and for all, it’s time to end the specious idea that a cadre of political elites can single-handedly make black voters pull the lever for hand-picked candidates. The Chicago mayor’s race seems like a good place to start.