By Ashley Rowland
Staff Writer
It's a question the candidates don't want to talk about, but plenty of people are asking: Did U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. lose his bid to become a U.S. senator because he's black?
Like many in the racially mixed crowd outside a busy diner in downtown Chattanooga late last week, Shelley Huckabay thinks so.
"I think if Harold Ford were a white man, he would have won by a landslide," said Ms. Huckabay, a white Chattanooga resident who was among the 100 or so supporters who greeted Rep. Ford on Thursday during his post-election tour through Tennessee.
While Democrats swept to victory in many parts of the country Tuesday, Rep. Ford lost his bid to become Tennessee's first black senator by 3 percentage points. His Republican opponent, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, is white.
Some political science experts say race may not have been an issue with most voters, but it may have been powerful enough to tip the election in Mr. Corker's favor.
"I think at least two or three points of the vote was influenced by race, and that might have been enough for Harold Ford to win," said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.
Others say the fact that Rep. Ford is young, single, ambitious and relatively liberal in a Republican-leaning state may have cost him the election -- not his race.
"Harold Ford did remarkably well, and you can't read anything in it other than one candidate won and another candidate lost," said Carol Swain, a political science and law professor at Vanderbilt University.
National spotlight
The race attracted international attention, both because it was one of a handful of contests that could determine which party would control the U.S. Senate and because Rep. Ford, a U.S. representative for 10 years, had a chance to make history by becoming the South's first black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
The contest made even more headlines last month after the Republican National Committee, without Mr. Corker's approval, aired a television ad that was interpreted by many as having racist overtones. The 30-second ad ends with a bare-shouldered white woman saying she met the congressman at a Playboy-sponsored party.
"Harold, call me," she whispers at the end of the ad, then winks.
"That commercial went to the uneasiness that people have about race and interracial dating," said Peter Groff, executive director of the Center for African American Policy at the University of Denver and a state senator. "It's very clear what that commercial was about."
Tom Schaller, an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland who wrote about Southern politics in "Whistling Past Dixie," said race hurt Rep. Ford.
"Certain white voters wouldn't vote for him if he blatantly called (the ad) racist, as opposed to saying it was slick or derogatory," Dr. Schaller said. "The fact that he wouldn't call it racist -- it's a concession that, in fact, it was. It's just that simple."
Both Rep. Ford and Mr. Corker called for the ad to be pulled, and rarely, if ever, talked about race during the campaign.
"I don't think Tennesseans saw it as an issue, but I think it's something we saw talked about more at a national level than here at our state," said Corker campaign spokesman Todd Womack.
Rep. Ford said during his Thursday stop in Chattanooga that race "didn't play a role with me."
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the national media made race more of an issue than it was among Tennesseans.
"The national shows, it's the first thing people ask me, as if they were trying to make it an issue," he said.
Beating The Bradley effect
According to a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Chattanooga Times Free Press in early November, 30 percent of white voters and 89 percent of black voters indicated they planned to vote for Rep. Ford. Fifty-eight percent of white voters and 2 percent of black voters said they planned to vote for Mr. Corker.
Many experts predicted Rep. Ford would lose by a wider margin than he did because some of his white supporters would desert him -- a pattern first documented in 1982, when former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost the California governor's race by a larger-than-expected margin. Researchers said white voters felt social pressure to tell pollsters they would vote for Mr. Bradley, who was black, but voted for his white opponent when they cast their ballots.
Dr. Swain said the close margin of victory in the Corker-Ford contest shows whites did vote for Rep. Ford, and the "Bradley effect" may be lessening.
"To me, that's a positive sign for race relations," she said.
The University of Denver's Sen. Groff said Rep. Ford created a blueprint for other black candidates: He was a moderate Democrat who appealed to moderate Republican and independent voters, and he was able to "transcend race" by focusing on issues that mattered to urban and rural voters -- health care, education and economic development.
"I think the focus on Tennessee was because of the unique dynamics that race plays in the American South," he said. "The fact that an African-American was able to capture the nomination of a majority party was a historical stride in the South."
Staff writers Andy Sher and Edward Lee Pitts contributed to this report.
E-mail Ashley Rowland at arowland@timesfreepress.com
Staff Writer
It's a question the candidates don't want to talk about, but plenty of people are asking: Did U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. lose his bid to become a U.S. senator because he's black?
Like many in the racially mixed crowd outside a busy diner in downtown Chattanooga late last week, Shelley Huckabay thinks so.
"I think if Harold Ford were a white man, he would have won by a landslide," said Ms. Huckabay, a white Chattanooga resident who was among the 100 or so supporters who greeted Rep. Ford on Thursday during his post-election tour through Tennessee.
While Democrats swept to victory in many parts of the country Tuesday, Rep. Ford lost his bid to become Tennessee's first black senator by 3 percentage points. His Republican opponent, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, is white.
Some political science experts say race may not have been an issue with most voters, but it may have been powerful enough to tip the election in Mr. Corker's favor.
"I think at least two or three points of the vote was influenced by race, and that might have been enough for Harold Ford to win," said David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington, D.C.
Others say the fact that Rep. Ford is young, single, ambitious and relatively liberal in a Republican-leaning state may have cost him the election -- not his race.
"Harold Ford did remarkably well, and you can't read anything in it other than one candidate won and another candidate lost," said Carol Swain, a political science and law professor at Vanderbilt University.
National spotlight
The race attracted international attention, both because it was one of a handful of contests that could determine which party would control the U.S. Senate and because Rep. Ford, a U.S. representative for 10 years, had a chance to make history by becoming the South's first black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
The contest made even more headlines last month after the Republican National Committee, without Mr. Corker's approval, aired a television ad that was interpreted by many as having racist overtones. The 30-second ad ends with a bare-shouldered white woman saying she met the congressman at a Playboy-sponsored party.
"Harold, call me," she whispers at the end of the ad, then winks.
"That commercial went to the uneasiness that people have about race and interracial dating," said Peter Groff, executive director of the Center for African American Policy at the University of Denver and a state senator. "It's very clear what that commercial was about."
Tom Schaller, an associate professor of political science at the University of Maryland who wrote about Southern politics in "Whistling Past Dixie," said race hurt Rep. Ford.
"Certain white voters wouldn't vote for him if he blatantly called (the ad) racist, as opposed to saying it was slick or derogatory," Dr. Schaller said. "The fact that he wouldn't call it racist -- it's a concession that, in fact, it was. It's just that simple."
Both Rep. Ford and Mr. Corker called for the ad to be pulled, and rarely, if ever, talked about race during the campaign.
"I don't think Tennesseans saw it as an issue, but I think it's something we saw talked about more at a national level than here at our state," said Corker campaign spokesman Todd Womack.
Rep. Ford said during his Thursday stop in Chattanooga that race "didn't play a role with me."
Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the national media made race more of an issue than it was among Tennesseans.
"The national shows, it's the first thing people ask me, as if they were trying to make it an issue," he said.
Beating The Bradley effect
According to a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Chattanooga Times Free Press in early November, 30 percent of white voters and 89 percent of black voters indicated they planned to vote for Rep. Ford. Fifty-eight percent of white voters and 2 percent of black voters said they planned to vote for Mr. Corker.
Many experts predicted Rep. Ford would lose by a wider margin than he did because some of his white supporters would desert him -- a pattern first documented in 1982, when former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost the California governor's race by a larger-than-expected margin. Researchers said white voters felt social pressure to tell pollsters they would vote for Mr. Bradley, who was black, but voted for his white opponent when they cast their ballots.
Dr. Swain said the close margin of victory in the Corker-Ford contest shows whites did vote for Rep. Ford, and the "Bradley effect" may be lessening.
"To me, that's a positive sign for race relations," she said.
The University of Denver's Sen. Groff said Rep. Ford created a blueprint for other black candidates: He was a moderate Democrat who appealed to moderate Republican and independent voters, and he was able to "transcend race" by focusing on issues that mattered to urban and rural voters -- health care, education and economic development.
"I think the focus on Tennessee was because of the unique dynamics that race plays in the American South," he said. "The fact that an African-American was able to capture the nomination of a majority party was a historical stride in the South."
Staff writers Andy Sher and Edward Lee Pitts contributed to this report.
E-mail Ashley Rowland at arowland@timesfreepress.com
