Posted by Roldo Bartimole
on December 9, 2007, 2:57 pm, in reply to "Re: The Audaciousness of Dennis Kucinich"
24.165.172.244
Kucinich earned his political reputation early as an anti-black councilman with blistering attacks upon then Mayor Carl Stokes, now a Muny Court Judge. Early in his career, Kucinich spurned meetings and ignored pleas when the few blacks in his near west side ward were being intimidated by arson and shootings and had to be protected by the private patrols of ministers and others. Later he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in an all-white, working class district against former Congressman Ron Mottl. Kucinich tried to defeat Mottl, who proposed an anti-busing amendment to the U. S. Constitution by painting Mottl as too sympathetic to blacks. Kucinich supporters distributed a leaflet charging Mottl with voting to make Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday a holiday.
But Kucinich has been able to slide in different directions when the constituency or needs of a particular campaign demanded it. To win election as city clerk of courts, Kucinich began to mend his reputation among blacks. He started by campaigning for Stokes’ former bodyguard, James Barrett, when he ran for Sheriff.
As mayor, he had four blacks in his cabinet and provided patronage for the 21st District Caucus, a creation of Carl Stokes and now the political base of his brother, U. S. Congressman Louis Stokes.
Kucinich, however, has found it difficult to restrain the use of racial tracts in this often bitterly divided city. Cleveland’s politics have revolved around racial animosity for the last two decades at least, following community-straining boycotts of the schools in the mid-1960s over segregation, the death of a minister protesting against construction of more schools in the ghetto, and early racial uprisings that climaxed with the Hough riots in the mid and late 1960s.
Though Kucinich avoided overt racial politics in his race for mayor when most black leaders backed his opponent Edward Feighan, now a congressman, Kucinich did attack Forbes, politically the most prominent black leader, and linked him to Feighan. Kucinich won by 3,000 votes. During a bitter recall of Kucinich less than a year later, Kucinich again used Forbes as a symbolic target to attract white voters. Forbes’s strong support of Cleveland’s business community and his role in awarding tax abatements blunted the racial nature of Kucinich’s attacks.
During his third campaign (a vote to determine whether or not to sell Muny Light) in his term (2-years) as Mayor, Kucinich injected race with a letter to a public housing official objecting to construction of a low-cost development in a white neighborhood strongly supportive of Kucinich. He objected, he said, because the new residents, presumably black, would hurt the “social fabric” of the community.
After the two-to-one Muny Light victory, with strong support in black wards, Kucinich claimed, “What we have done is of great significance. We’ve united ethics and black people on economic issues. No one in Cleveland or in the country has been able to do that and that’s really the coalition of the future, because black people and white people can get together on economic issues.” That fit Kucinich’s professed urban populism by concentrating on economic, not social issues.
Not much later Kucinich violated his dictum on social issues by using busing politically to tar other candidates and solidify his support. Council voted $30,000 to distribute a film about the legal aspects of school desegregation. Kucinich vetoed the legislation. White council members, fearful the issue would be used against them in their wards, persuaded Forbes to avoid a vote to override the veto. That would allow them to avoid taking a public position before the election and end the matter, they thought.
However, Kucinich campaign leaders drew up leaflets and had volunteers begin a house-to-house campaign attacking individual council members for voting for “forced busing,” based on the original vote. The leaflets charged that a council member had “sold out on busing.” Further, it charged, he (council member) “voted three times for forced school busing when George Forbes desperately needed his vote.”
At the same time, across town, Kucinich campaigners were distributing a newspaper that referred to whites as “rednecks, racists and anti-civil righters.” An article began: “No issue has attracted more widespread attention in recent years than the Cleveland NAACP’s attempt to desegregate the schools. Conservatives, racist, rednecks and anti-civil-righters have collectively manipulated the media with ‘anti-busing’ rhetoric, suggesting on the one hand that they believe in equal opportunities but that they are against “massive forced cross-town bussing.’”
Almost amusingly, Kucinich’s forces used leaflets with George Forbes’s photograph in literature passed out on both the East and West sides of town but with the exact opposite messages. On the white West Side, Forbes was revealed as endorsing Republican George Voinovich. On the black East side, Forbes was made to appear to be endorsing Kucinich.
Forbes tried to derail Kucinich’s ride back to City Hall, going as far as to question Kucinich’s mental balance. Thus far, Kucinich and Forbes have coexisted as if they have an arrangement. (Forbes has said that Kucinich wasn’t a racist, as I also agree. Both of us, said Forbes, played race politics.)
Dennis, with his sights on statewide office and thus in need of black support in Ohio’s big cities could turn out to be George Forbes’s best friend locally.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread