The High Profile Black Republican Candidacies of Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and Hall of Famer Lynn Swann

By James White

Specifically, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of three statewide black Republican candidacies in 2006 in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. During the 2006 midterm election cycle, the Republican Party recruited and gave strong support to three high-profile African American statewide candidates. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and former Pittsburgh Steelers star and television sports broadcaster Lynn Swann campaigned for their state’s governorship in Ohio and Pennsylvania, respectively. Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele vied for a vacated United States Senate seat in Maryland. After five decades of miserable levels of support from black voters and numerous initiatives to increase its share of the African American electorate, the GOP estimated that credible black Republican candidacies would substantially improve its image among African American voters and, thus, garner a larger share of the black vote.

State Representative James White

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796025798

James White

Dr. James White is Professor of Plant Biology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA. Dr. White obtained the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Botany and Plant Pathology/Mycology from Auburn University, Alabama, and the Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Texas, Austin in 1987. Dr. White specializes in symbiosis research, particularly endophytic microbes. He is the author of more than 400 articles, and author and editor of reference books on the biology, taxonomy, and phylogeny of microbial endophytes, including Biotechnology of Acremonium Endophytes of Grasses (1994), Microbial Endophytes (2000), The Clavicipitalean Fungi (2004), The Fungal Community: Its Organization and Role in the Ecosystem (2005; 2016), Defensive Mutualism in Microbial Symbiosis (2009) and Seed Endophytes: Biology and Biotechnology (2019). He and students in his lab are exploring diversity of endophytic and biostimulant microbes and the various impacts that they have on host plants.

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

I Introduction and Review of Relevant Literature

I. Introduction

II. Review of Literature

III. Conclusion

II Racial Politics from the Founding for the Nation through the Emergence and Development of the Two-Party System

I. Colonial Antecedents

II. Slavery in the Revolutionary Era, the Constitution, and the Early Republic

III. Racial Politics and the Evolution of the American Party System

A. The First Party System: 1790s–1820s

B. The Second Party System: 1820s–1850s

C. The Breakdown of the Second Party System and the Emergence of the Third Party Era: 1850s–1890s

D. The Fourth Party System: 1890s–1930s

E. The Fifth Party System: 1932–1960s

III Racial Politics and Partisan Realignment in the Late Twentieth Century

I. The 1960s: African American Realignment to the Democrats, as White Southerners Shift to the GOP

II. Presidential Election Cycles: 1968–88

III. Presidential Elections in the 1990s

IV. Conclusion

IV The 2000, 2002, and 2004 Elections Set the Stage for a Major Push in 2006

I. Bush versus Gore: 2000

II. Post-2000 Election Efforts of the GOP

III. Contesting the 2002 Midterm Elections

IV. The 2004 Presidential Efforts

V: Had The GOP Finally Turned the Corner on Outreach?

A. High Hopes for Bigger Gains in 2006 and 2008

B. Republican Outreach Still Had a Long Way to Go

C. The Impact of Hurricane Katrina on GOP Outreach Gains

V Maryland Case Study—Michael Steele for the US Senate

I. Introduction: The Context of the 2006 Election

II. The Republican Nomination: The Maryland GOP Goes with Michael Steele

III. The Democrats Choose Benjamin Cardin

IV. The General Election Campaign

V. Analyzing the Results: The 2006 Cardin-Steele Senatorial Election

A. Overall Statewide Vote Patterns in Maryland

B. Jurisdictions with High Levels of Black Population in Maryland

C. Steele’s Performance among Conservative Whites in Maryland

VI. Conclusion

VI Ohio Case Study: Kenneth Blackwell for Governor

I. Introduction: Making a Mark in the Bellwether State of Ohio

II. The Republican Nomination: The GOP Lines Up with Kenneth Blackwell

III. The Democrats Choose Congressman Ted Strickland

IV. The General Election Campaign in Ohio

V. Analyzing the Results

A. Overall Statewide Vote Patterns in Ohio Governor’s Race

B. The Blackwell-Strickland Vote in Northeast and Southwest Ohio

C. Statewide Performance among Ohio’s Black Electorate

VI. Conclusion

VII Pennsylvania Case Study: Lynn Swann for Governor

I. Introduction: Pennsylvania Becomes a More Difficult State for Republicans

II. The Republican Nomination: The GOP Settles on Lynn Swann

III. The Democrats Renominate Governor Ed Rendell

IV. The General Election Campaign between Rendell and Swann

V. Analyzing the Results

A. Overall Statewide Vote Patterns

B. Statewide Performance among the Black Electorate in Pennsylvania

C. The Urban Vote in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties

D. Jurisdictions with High Levels of Black Population

E. Lynn Swann and White Conservative Voters in the T

VI. Conclusion

VIII Conclusion

I. The Issue of Race Is a Historical Phenomenon for America

II. The Twenty-First-Century Republicans Seek to Pivot Again on Race

III. The 2006 Midterm Election—The Year of the Black Republican?

A. Michael Steele in Maryland

B. Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio

C. Lynn Swann in Pennsylvania

IV. A Few Lessons Learned from 2006

V. Republican Engagement with Black Voters in the Age of President Obama

VI. The Irony of the 2010 Midterm Elections

VII. Future Research

Cited References

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE 3.1 BLACK PARTISAN IDENTIFICATION 1952–2004.

FIGURE 3.2 SOUTHERN DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL VOTE FROM 1960 TO 1972.

FIGURE 5.1 MAP OF MARYLAND.

FIGURE 6.1 MAP OF OHIO.

FIGURE 7.1 RURAL WHITE CONSERVATIVE T COUNTIES.

FIGURE 7.2 COUNTIES WON BY DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR NOMINEES IN 2002 AND 2006.

FIGURE 8.1 OPTIMUM ELECTORAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR BLACK REPUBLICANS.

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE 3.1 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE ELECTORAL PERFORMANCE IN STATES WON IN 1964 COMPARED TO THE 1960 ELECTION

TABLE 3.2 SOUTHERN STATES’ ELECTORAL COLLEGE DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN VOTE AND PERCENTAGE OF BLACK POPULATION IN 1964

TABLE 5.1 ELECTION RESULTS FOR US SENATOR IN MARYLAND, 1994 AND 2006

TABLE 5.2 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION EXIT POLL DATA FOR US SENATOR IN MARYLAND, 1994 AND 2006

TABLE 5.3 MARYLAND COUNTY ELECTION RESULTS FOR THE UNITED STATES SENATE IN 1994 AND 2006

TABLE 6.1 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE IN OHIO, 1976–2004

TABLE 6.2 UNITED STATES SENATOR AND GOVERNOR RACES IN OHIO, 1980–2004

TABLE 6.3 COMPARISON OF REPUBLICAN STATEWIDE VOTE PERFORMANCE IN CLEVELAND, CINCINNATI, AND DAYTON 1994–2002

TABLE 6.4 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION RESULTS FOR GOVERNOR IN OHIO, 1998 AND 2006

TABLE 6.5 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS EXIT POLL DATA FOR GOVERNOR IN OHIO, 1998 AND 2006

TABLE 6.6 REGIONAL COMPARISON OF 2006 GOVERNOR’S ELECTION

TABLE 7.1 PRESIDENTIAL VOTE IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1980–2004

TABLE 7.2 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION RESULTS FOR THE PENNSYLVANIA GOVERNORSHIP IN 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006

TABLE 7.3 EXIT POLL DATA FOR GUBERNATORIAL ELECTIONS FOR GOVERNOR IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1994, 1998, AND 2006, WITH ESTIMATED BREAKDOWN OF THE BLACK VOTE

TABLE 7.4 COMPARISON OF DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR NOMINEE PERFORMANCE IN ALLEGHANY AND PHILADELPHIA COUNTIES, 1994–2006

TABLE 7.5 COMPARISON OF DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN VOTE PERFORMANCE IN PHILADELPHIA COUNTY 1994–2006

TABLE 7.6 PERCENTAGE OF THE VOTE GAINED BY THE REPUBLICAN NOMINEE IN PENNSYLVANIA’S SECOND US CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT IN PHILADELPHIA COUNTY IN 2002 AND 2006

TABLE 7.7 MAJOR PARTY ELECTORAL PERFORMANCES FOR THE GOVERNORSHIP IN CONSERVATIVE (T) COUNTIES IN PENNSYLVANIA, 1994–2002

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T HIS MANUSCRIPT IS the culmination of a significant body of academic work over a considerable amount of time. I am indebted to the Lord for providing me the strength to persevere. I am extremely grateful to my family for giving me the support and encouragement during this endeavor. I am very thankful to Beth. The Political Science Department at the University of Houston has a tremendous cadre of scholars, and I am honored to have Dr. Richard Murray as my dissertation chair. He has been a diligent and inspiring partner throughout this entire process.

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CHAPTER ONE

Introduction and Review of Relevant Literature

I. Introduction

O NE OF THE most defining and perplexing subjects in American politics is the issue of race. In one sense, the evolution of American political culture involves the democratic principle. That is, government exists by the consent of the governed. While the usual course of human history shows that power accumulates with one or a few powerful individuals, American history charted a different course. For temporary periods, the people, as expressed in elections, loan their government the power to govern. This concept rings loud in the Declaration of Independence—the most enduring document of the American Founding Era: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. Thomas Jefferson, a Southern slaveholder from Virginia, wrote these eloquent words. This dichotomy would be a reflection of a persistent contradiction in American political history. How could a society seeking legitimacy in liberty and equality deny these essential moral forces to a minority segment of the political community defined by the color of their skin?

While some say that race does not matter in the twenty-first-century politics, the reality is it endures. We see that in the backdrop of then senator Barack Obama’s pursuit of the presidency of the United States in 2007–2008 when he carefully chose a deracialized campaign strategy, in contrast to Jesse Jackson in the 1980s, to create a broad-based electoral coalition that could unite behind an American black. That is an interesting point about the issue of race in American politics. It plays a very important role even without the predominant issue.

As our nation’s territorial expansion raced westward and the United States rose to global economic preeminence and superpower status while developing into a more cosmopolitan society, the issue of race was always there. Whether the phrase was the Slavery Question, the Negro Question, civil rights, voting rights, or affirmative action, the issue was about race in America. Sixty years ago, a noted political scientist identified racial issues as central to the political development of the nation’s most distinct region. When all is said and done, V. O. Key Jr. concluded, The politics of the South revolves around the positions of the Negro.¹

This study looks at the racial factor in American politics in twenty-first-century America. The focus is not on Key’s native South but on three states that stood with the Union in the great sectional clash of the 1860s. The arena is partisan politics—Democrats versus Republicans—and the role of race in the American elections.

Specifically, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of three statewide black Republican candidacies in 2006 in Maryland, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. During the 2006 midterm election cycle, the Republican Party recruited and gave strong support to three high-profile African American statewide candidates. Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell and former Pittsburgh Steelers star and television sports broadcaster Lynn Swann campaigned for their state’s governorship in Ohio and Pennsylvania, respectively. Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele vied for a vacated United States Senate seat in Maryland. After five decades of miserable levels of support from black voters and numerous initiatives to increase its share of the African American electorate, the GOP estimated that credible black Republican candidacies would substantially improve its image among African American voters and, thus, garner a larger share of the black vote.

Four general premises motivate this research. One, throughout the history of the United States, beginning during the colonial period and until the early years of the twenty-first century, the issue of race has been an important facet of American politics. Two, the functioning of popular politics relies on a competitive party system. Since Reconstruction, partisan politics as it relates to the American black electorate has usually featured one major political party that has been the beneficiary of strong support from African American voters, while the other partisan faction, in some respects, has been indifferent, if not outright hostile, toward black political interests. Three, since 1964, the black electorate has predominantly supported the Democratic Party in national, state, and local races throughout the United States. Four, due to electoral and moral reasons, the Republican Party wants to increase its share of the black vote.

Reflecting African Americans’ monolithic voting behavior, most recent research has focused on the black electorate’s support for Democratic candidates. This study does not. Instead, this body of research looks at how the Republican Party, which has not won many African American votes over the last five decades, encouraged black Republican candidacies in an effort to attract African American voters. By employing qualitative and quantitative methods, this research looks at elite decision-making and voter behavior in three major state elections. For each candidacy, I collected a sample of media reports and attempted to highlight how the issue of race played a role in the three black Republicans’ quest for elected office. Then I used state election data, US Census demographic data, and network exit polling results to assist in evaluating each campaign’s ability to increase the GOP’s share of the black electorate in these contests.

This research has three sections. Initially, we will look at how race played a significant role in American politics from the colonial period to 2004. Chapter 2 looks at the role of race in the development of the two-party system from the beginning of European colonization to the presidential election of 1960. This chapter charts the political history of the United States through slavery and then Reconstruction, when for the first time American black males could exercise franchise rights in the US. The new black electorate, not surprisingly, was overwhelmingly supportive of President Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican to win the White House. After all, he was the issuer of the Emancipation Proclamation and the leader who successfully prosecuted the Civil War. This, in turn, led to the abolishment of slavery in the United States and the establishment of black voting rights. It was the National Republican Party, now dependent on Southern black votes, that pursued the Reconstruction policies in the South that were strongly opposed by white majorities. And when the military occupation of the South ended in the mid-1870s, the region was again dominated by white Democrats, who passed laws disenfranchising black voters. These realities were reflected in Northern blacks continuing to support Republican candidates until the Great Depression. The sharp economic collapse of the 1930s forced many Northern blacks to support Democrats by 1932. From 1932 to 1960, the Democratic Party won the black vote, but the Republicans could count on a respectable 20–30 percent share in the national presidential elections.

The 1960s was a defining decade for the Democratic and Republican parties. The Democrats made a concerted effort to become the partisan home for the black electorate, while the Republicans traded their shrinking African American share for a larger segment of the Southern white vote. Chapter 3 highlights this development with the decisive presidential election of 1964. President Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic nominee, won one of the largest landslides in US political history in his victory over Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican standard-bearer. And it was Johnson’s championing of civil rights legislation and Goldwater’s campaign in favor of states’ rights that triggered the black vote realigning to the Democratic Party and the collapse of African American support for the Republican Party. That trade, resulting in blacks becoming more Democratic but whites more Republican, worked pretty well for the GOP, as the Republicans won five of six presidential contests from 1968 to 1988. Chapter 3 also looks at the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, when Bill Clinton, with overwhelming support from blacks, was elected and reelected, becoming the first Democrat since President Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term.

The subsequent chapters discuss how race influenced the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections and led to an effort by the GOP to compete for a larger share of the black vote. Specifically, chapter 4 chronicles the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Although the Republicans begin the last presidential election of the twentieth century with a nominee, then Texas governor George W. Bush, who pledged to work to end his party’s dismal performance with black voters, had racially tinged commercials in 2000 that ended up polarizing the electorate at a level not seen since the 1964 presidential election cycle. Coupled with the highly controversial aftermath in Florida, the events of the 2000 election year infused the Republican Party with a sense of urgency in reaching out to black voters not only to improve its image but also to ensure the party’s competitiveness in an increasingly diverse nation. Chapter 4 concentrates on the GOP’s outreach efforts between the 2000 and 2004 election cycles. By 2004, the Republican Party was able to increase its overall national black support by 2 percentage points. But more tellingly, the GOP’s performance in critical swing states, such as Ohio, which saw about 16 percent of its black voters support President George W. Bush’s reelection bid, sealed the victory in the Electoral College. This fueled high ambitions for the Republicans and for President Bush’s legacy. For 2006, the Republicans would take the next step and actively recruit and promote credible high-profile black Republicans to run for statewide offices. However, the poor and perceptively insensitive response to the Hurricane Katrina crisis on the Gulf Coast by the Bush administration tempered the 2006 efforts. Live television footage of African Americans trapped in New Orleans without food and water brought a high level of scrutiny on the GOP’s efforts to win over more black voters.

The following three chapters examine the campaign in 2006 in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. Each chapter provides an account of the campaign and a review of election data in order to evaluate how each campaign attracted more or fewer black votes for the Republican Party. Chapter 5 looks at the lieutenant governor Michael Steele’s campaign for the United States Senate in Maryland against Congressman Benjamin Cardin. Maryland seemed to offer the Republicans an ideal environment. First, Lieutenant Governor Steele was a very attractive candidate. He was one-half of the most successful Republican gubernatorial duo since the 1960s in Maryland. Moreover, Maryland had the highest percentage of black population of any state in the Union outside the South. Steele was not successful, but he did, as we shall see, dismiss some concerns about black Republican candidates.

Chapter 6 analyzes the electoral battle in Ohio that pitted African American Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell against Congressman Ted Strickland. While Secretary Blackwell had a solid history of holding elected statewide positions in Ohio over two decades and supporting strong conservative causes, the Republican nominee did not have unanimity of support among his state party leadership. Like Steele, he was defeated, but his candidacy provides insights into race and partisanship in one of the most competitive states in America.

Chapter 7 hones in on the election between black Republican football star turned businessman and media personality Lynn Swann and incumbent Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell. Swann was not able to cash in on his notoriety as a professional athlete and media star to win over new adherents, especially black voters. Nor was he able to use his credentials as a businessman to hold on to white Republican votes. Rather than being the wrong candidate at the wrong time, Swann was a pretty good candidate campaigning in the wrong electoral cycle.

In summation, chapter 8 reviews four major points. First, this chapter recaps how the racial issue has historically been addressed in American partisan politics, especially with the realignment of blacks in to the Democratic Party coalition during the twentieth century. Second, this section summarizes the Republican Party’s efforts, during the George W. Bush administration, to reengage the African American electorate by promoting and supporting three prominent black candidates in statewide elections in 2006. Third, this chapter assesses the outcome of the balancing act these three state cases involved. Could the Republican Party broaden its appeal to black voters without alienating the GOP’s base of white voters and also endangering the party’s ability to win white independent or swing voters? Finally, chapter 8 highlights some patterns that emerged from the inspection of these three black Republican candidacies in 2006 and some of the implications for future elections. This forward-looking focus is especially relevant in light of the fact that the 2008 presidential election resulted in the election of a Democratic president, while the 2010 midterm elections saw the election of a number of black Republicans in congressional and state legislatures.

II. Review of Literature

Due to the broad nature and enduring character of the issue of race in American politics, there is an extensive literature on this subject. In the following section, I focus on the subset of literature relevant to this research: the interplay of race and the American party system. A good place to start is Jeremy D. Mayer’s 2002 study, Running on Race: Racial Politics in Presidential Campaigns 1960–2000. Mayer provides a very readable, contemporary, yet comprehensive work on the role of race in American presidential politics. Additionally, his study served as an exemplar for a case study research analysis I undertook. From 1960 to 2000, each presidential contest in Mayer’s book represents a case. Each has the following components: the setting, the candidates, the primary race, the general election, and the conclusion. In particular, Mayer addresses the strategy candidates pursued in relation to race and the tactical moves that each campaign made because of the issue of race. Throughout his book, he establishes that race and the array of issues surrounding it have been crucial to every presidential election since 1960.² Therefore, every presidential candidate during this period has had to take positions on racial matters, and these choices substantially affected the election year’s environment.³ The author relies on biographies, correspondence between principal personalities, research conducted by political scientists, speeches, and periodical articles. Ultimately, Mayer concedes that many other issues influenced the eleven presidential elections during his selected period of inquiry. Compared to other foreign and domestic issues, race was often tertiary. However, race always mattered.⁴

Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR by Nancy J. Weiss provided context for my research with an analytical view of how the years before 1960, mainly the New Deal era, set the stage for a major realignment of the African American electorate to the Democratic column from the GOP. Her argument is simple—American blacks, like other voters, are economic voters. Blacks became Democrats in response to the economic benefits of the New Deal and they voted for Franklin Roosevelt in spite of the New Deal’s lack of a substantive record on race.⁵ Her methodological approach analyzing the black realignment to the Democratic Party during the New Deal is limited to African American political attitudes. Weiss contends that because polling was in its infancy in the 1930s and the polling entities rarely isolated blacks as a distinct political group. It was simpler for her to document African American political attitudes compared to black political behavior.⁶ Another limitation that the author identified is the maintenance of official voting records. Many election depositories did not maintain data by race, rendering it impossible to measure how black Americans in general voted in any national election.⁷ In light of that, in her study of black political attitudes in the 1930s, Weiss relied on African American newspapers, personal papers of President Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and other members of the FDR administration, the papers of American blacks in government during the Roosevelt administrations, and the records of federal agencies. She also included interviews with white New Dealers, black politicians, government officials, civil rights leaders, journalists, and clergymen.⁸ Weiss’s research reveals that racial discrimination often determined the disbursement of the New Deal aid. Moreover, the New Deal’s housing program accelerated the residential segregation of blacks in urban ghettos.⁹ Despite its shortcomings in relation to African Americans, the public emergency work of the New Deal was instrumental in realizing a significant reduction in black unemployment. As a consequence, blacks moved decisively to the Democratic Party.¹⁰

Another body of work, Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics, by Edward G. Carmines and James Stimson analyzed change in the political process in terms of the issue of race. These two authors claim that the issue of race reached a level of peak dominance in the mid-1960s for about three years. The partisan struggle over race during this short period permanently rearranged the American party system.¹¹ With their inquiry, the authors attempt to determine the initiation of certain issues and why particular issues matter at a specific time. Carmines and Stimson analogize this political process to the disciplines of biology, geology, and paleontology. Like political science, these areas of scientific study focus on change, but this evolution involves the development of species. Using this perspective, the authors see the process of change in a political environment as primarily driven by issue evolutions. They focus on issues that are capable of altering the political environment within which they originated and evolved.¹² Issue evolutions are synonymous with partisan evolutions. Although these issues have existed in the previous environment, they introduce fundamental tensions into the party system like partisan defections and linkages between the citizenry and the parties.¹³ In other words, these issue evolutions fundamentally reshape the party system.¹⁴

Easy issues, according to the authors, have the basic attributes to produce evolutionary changes because they require basic gut level responses and understanding. Such issues require no supporting context of factual knowledge, no impressive reasoning ability, and no attention to the nuances of political life.¹⁵ Definitely, race conforms to the description of an easy issue. Voters do not need any facts, logic, or prior attention to politics in responding to racial issues. Either a person believes that blacks and whites are equal or they are not. Given that basic reality, for most persons, responses to racial issues do not entail an extensive analytic assessment of political equality and how skin color fits into that analysis. Most people’s gut reactions to racial issues likely developed initially in their family and community environments and were then modified by contemporary relationships and life experiences without the reinforcement of the political environment.¹⁶

However, rarely in politics is any single issue predominant. In light of that, it is important that another study places race in the context of everything else. With the Transformations of the American Party System, Everett Carll Ladd Jr. with Charles D. Hadley clarify the reordering which has been imposed upon the political life by societal change since the New Deal.¹⁷ They analyze the political coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970s. Parties, elections, and voting are the dependent variables acted upon by a macro-social system.¹⁸ Their research analysis relies heavily on survey data and the Michigan election studies.

My study has adopted the Ladd-Hadley description of the South as the eleven states of the Old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma. The most significant contribution to this research inquiry from Ladd and Hadley is their in-depth explanation of postindustrialism. Simply, a new macro-social system or, using their nomenclature, a sociopolitical setting (postindustrialism) eclipsed the preceding sociopolitical environment called the New Deal.¹⁹

In their view, postindustrialism centers decisively around the precipitants and consequences of several interrelated developments: affluence; advanced technological development; the central importance of knowledge, national communication processes; the growing prominence and independence of the culture; new occupational structures and with them new life styles and expectations.²⁰ Technological change creates a level of societal wealth that exempts a majority of the population from concerns of subsistence. Consequently, this affluence provides a decisive majority of the population with the opportunity to indulge in privileges such as higher education, for instance, which was formerly reserved to an elite few. The extension of higher education to unprecedented numbers translates into a massive intelligentsia. The characterization of the intelligentsia involves those trained in the use of ideas and involved in the culture.²¹ Due to the size of the intelligentsia, the communications media gains prominence by serving as the primary instrument for debating and transmitting views on culture and filtering the public agenda.²²

Contrary to possible initial intuitions, technological advancement, affluence, higher rates of college attendance and graduation, and the sophistication of electronic media do not end or even minimize societal conflict. In fact, these societal developments characteristic of postindustrialism heighten conflict. In societies that confront problems of subsistence, wealth is an important badge of distinction. On the other hand, in postindustrial societies, mass affluence does not foster obeisance but encourages individuals to develop a critical posture. Moreover, affluence does not signal contentment. The level of dissatisfaction increases due to higher expectations, and thus, there is conflict. The authors describe this condition the entitlement revolution, and this higher sense of entitlement intensifies conflict. This situation is circuitous because, invariably, there is always a deficit between what the political system offers versus what is expected, therefore fueling conflict.²³

This heightened sense of entitlement and the accompanying conflict, according to Ladd/Hadley, have affected the beneficiary groups and contributory groups. The New Deal sociopolitical system practiced majoritarian equalitarianism because it made demands on the wealthy elite few for the benefit of the majority. In contrast, the equalitarianism practiced in the postindustrial era is minoritarian. That is, the societal system makes demands on the majority, the middle-lower strata, to benefit targeted small-sized groups like blacks. As a result, African Americans and the white working class find themselves in conflict.²⁴ During the postindustrial era, Ladd and Hadley identified blacks as a new-claimant ascending group, while the white unionized labor sector was declining. During the New Deal, the ascendant and change-demanding groups were urban whites, manual workers, Catholics, and Southern whites. Since the Democratic Party was the standard-bearer for the New Deal representing change and liberalism, these groups supported the Democratic Party.²⁵ Conversely, in the postindustrial setting, blacks are ascendants and demanding change from the Democratic Party, which still espouses progressive liberalism. Black demands place the original New Deal groups in the posture of conservatism. They do not want a return of business nationalism that characterized the late 1800s and early 1900s. Instead, their conservatism involves resistance to the societal changes centered on race.²⁶ In sum, Ladd/Hadley declares that by the 1970s, the American party system had experienced a basic transformation that has undermined the New Deal coalitions. The system of which they were parts, along with the social era which nurtured it, having served us well, have slipped into history.²⁷ Their work establishes the issue of race as a prominent contributor to the transition and maintenance of a new party system that initially became evident in the 1960s.²⁸

Of course, the issue of race, especially since 1960, has served as a function of a myriad of political developments as well as has been influenced by various aspects in the political arena. In Controversies in Voting Behavior, Richard Niemi and Herbert Weisburg (2001), as editors, attempted to compile the best research in contemporary voting behavior.²⁹ These editors identified six general areas associated with voting and elections: political participation, political information, voter determinants, divided government, party identification, and party system change. Within each of these categories, Niemi and Weisburg assembled studies from a variety of notable scholars that reflect a diversity of research methods and outcomes concerning voting and elections. One area involved how the issue of race influences voter choice. The overall premise is that group attachments are an excellent guide that explains how people vote. The formation of these attitudes occurs well in advance of an election campaign and varies little over the short run.³⁰ This is made evident in research by Richard Nadeau and Michael S. Lewis-Beck. Nadeau and Beck initially introduced this study in 2001 in the Journal of Politics. They attempted to provide clarity in the realm of economic voting. These researchers accept the notion that voters engage in economic voting. However, there is little agreement within the scholastic community on whether voters engage in sociotropic economic voting or pocketbook economic voting. Therefore, Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, using American National Election Studies data from 1956 to 1996 and national-level economic data, conduct their research by analyzing voter measures of national economic indicators. In one model, presidential candidate vote choice is the dependent variable. The independent variables include the respondent’s evaluation of the condition of their personal finances, the level of change in real disposal income, the incumbent party, party identification multiplied by incumbent party, and race multiplied by incumbent party. Even in explaining economic voting, race was not only a statistically significant variable; it also had the highest level of statistical significance compared to the other variables in the model.³¹

Niemi and Weisburg also include research conducted by Steven Rosenstone and John Hansen (1993) on the influence of the civil rights movement and voter turnout. The civil rights movement played a pivotal role in removing the barriers to the franchise for American blacks. Consequently, it led to greater political participation and competition in the South.³²

Race contributes to the explanation of the decline in social capital within the American democracy. Niemi and Weisburg included a study by Robert Putnam that examines the condition of social capital in the United States from 1972 to 1994. Most of the quantitative data cited by Putnam originates from the General Social Survey. Putnam describes social capital as the features of social life that include networks, norms, and trust that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives.³³ More importantly, social capital refers to social connections and the attendant norms and trust. In theory, Putnam contends, [T]he more we connect with other people, the more we trust them and vice versa.³⁴ In turn, social trust and civic engagement have a strong correlation.³⁵

According to Putnam, race is an absolutely fundamental feature of American social history that nearly every other feature of our society is connected to in some way.³⁶ He claims that just after the greatest success of the civil rights revolution of the 1960s social connectedness has experienced a decline.³⁷ Putnam does not take the convenient explanation of sociological white flight.³⁸ During the decade of the eighties, Putnam finds social capital erosion among all races. Black Americans have been disengaging from religious and civic organizations as rapidly as white Americans have. The pace of disengagement among white Americans has been uncorrelated with racial tolerance or support for segregation.³⁹ Graphical data offered by Putnam definitely indicates that the rate of social disconnectedness is relatively identical among desegregationist whites, segregationist whites, and blacks. In fact, his findings suggests that the racial differences in associational memberships are not large.⁴⁰ For instance, compared to whites, blacks belong to more organizations due to the higher likeliness to belong to religious or ethnic-based associations. However, vast racial differences exist in social trust. While 45 percent of whites possessed the view that most people can be trusted, only 17 percent of blacks supported this position after Putnam controlled for education.⁴¹ Putnam accounts real experiences over many generations, not collective paranoia for this large difference in social trust between blacks and whites.⁴²

The Niemi and Weisburg collection also discusses the partisan behavior of the black vote since 1964.⁴³ Research conducted by Stanley and Niemi (1999) shows that although the black vote became predominantly Democratic during the New Deal, it became even more Democratic beginning with the 1964 election. Interestingly, this Stanley and Niemi research opens the prospect of a testing of the black loyalty to the Democratic Party. These two researchers point out that a continued anti-immigrant stance of the Republican Party could result in the Hispanic vote shifting in favor of the Democratic Party. In turn, this would make the Democratic Party more clearly the party of the minorities. When Stanley and Niemi conducted their research, blacks and Hispanics comprised an estimated one-third of the Democratic coalition, up from a level of 20 percent in the early eighties. They predicted that as the Democratic Party became the electoral home of two significant minority groups, it might become difficult for the Democrats to satisfy both the black and Hispanic constituencies.⁴⁴ Another study by Warren Miller and J. Merrill Shanks (1996) describes the black vote as distinctive. After controlling for partisanship, ideology, policies, presidential performance, and candidate evaluations, conventional explanations could not fully account from the high Democratic vote among blacks in 1992.⁴⁵

Another change, the Niemi/Weisburg