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Although Whites in South Africa were the ruling class, they were also the minority in the country. Black organizations and groups, such as African National Congress (ANC), fought for years to end the centuries-old ruling of Whites. With the help of more than 22.7 million eligible voters — some waiting as long as 12 hours to cast their ballots — the election was more than just a symbolic gesture.

Watch South Africa’s 1994 election season here:

The next month, Nelson Mandela would become President of the ANC, standing in tandem with Bishop Desmond Tutu as he addressed the throng of supporters at his May inauguration of that year.

Watch the inauguration here:

To this day, the ANC remains in power, even as the now-dissolved National Party (NP), which enforced apartheid throughout the country, tried desperately to undermine the will of the people by reorganizing their political structure. The NP, dealing with conflict among its members and unpopularity with voters, would end in 2005.

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Best known among international audiences for his 1994 song “Seven Seconds” with Neneh Cherry, N’Dour won a Grammy in 2005 for the album Egypt. He performs a style of traditional music known as mbalax.

Now at age 52, N’Dour, who has never held elected office before, hopes to defeat presidential incumbent Abdoulaye Wade.

This summer, Senegalese protestors took to the streets to rally against Wade’s efforts to implement constitutional changes that would have helped ensure him a third term. As a result, Wade, 85, has backed down from seeking those changes, but is still running in the election.

N’Dour told TIME magazine his reasons for throwing his hat in the ring and what he hopes to do if he’s elected.

Why are you running?

Youssou N’Dour: Firstly, I am a citizen of this country and I see the situation here deteriorating. Rights and civil liberties are being degraded. I cannot sit back and watch them diminish further. Secondly, more than a million people have, directly or indirectly, called for my candidacy. And thirdly, I do not have confidence in the way elections are conducted in this country. My joining the race will shed some light on it, bring some attention, some transparency.

What’s your vision for Senegal?

After my Presidency, this is the Senegal you will see: a moderate state, not a huge, encumbering state; where children are going to school; where AIDS and malaria programs are effective; where the country is clean and managed in an environmentally friendly way, just as well as Rwanda; more democracy, good governance; free, fair and transparent elections, safeguarded by an independent electoral commission; and robust institutions, which I think are the key to democracy.

Presumably it helps being a superstar when you’re running for office?

It helps. But it also brings a challenge. I have to change people’s perceptions of me from a superstar, as you put it, to someone with a credible story and with something meaningful to say. I have to convince the voters that I am sincere and have something significant to offer.

Read more here.

Entering the race just a few weeks before elections, it’s hard to gauge N’Dour’s chances as he joins an already crowded field of more than a dozen candidates. Some critics argue that N’Dour should have thrown his support behind another opposition candidate to oust Wade who has come under fire for years of accusations of corruption, nepotism and attacks against personal freedoms.

However, where he may be lacking in political and academic credentials, N’Dour has been politically active. He’s worked on Amnesty International events with other pop stars like Sting and Bruce Springsteen and as an U.N. goodwill ambassador, supporting anti-malaria campaigns and awareness about the crisis in the Darfur.

N’Dour told the New York Times:

“It’s true that I haven’t pursued higher education,” but “I have proved my competence, commitment, rigor and efficiency time and time again,” he said. “I have studied at the school of the world. Travel teaches as much as books.”

In fact, N’Dour’s far from the only pop star to seek office. With varying degrees of success from Wyclef Jean to Ruben Blades, singers have eyed the political arena.

Now it’s N’Dour’s turn. What do you think of his chances?

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Netherlands— The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor named a former Kenyan Cabinet minister and five others on Wednesday as the alleged orchestrators of postelection violence in 2007 that left more than 1,000 people dead.

Luis Moreno Ocampo wants judges to charge six Kenyan leaders, including the son of the country’s founding father, with crimes against humanity including murder, rape and tortue. But it is the case against former higher education minister William Ruto that could cause the most violent backlash in Kenya.

Kenya’s police commissioner, Mathew K. Iteere warned that “criminal elements” were looking to use Moreno-Ocampo’s announcement as an opportunity break the law and vowed to crack down on any outbreaks of violence.

Moreno-Ocampo alleged that Ruto began plotting attacks on supporters of President Mwai Kibaki a year before the election and worked together with Minister for Industrialization, Henry Kosgey and radio broadcaster Joshua Sang to coordinate a campaign of killing and forced deportations in the Rift Valley.

In a separate case, Moreno-Ocampo charged Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta — son of Kenyan independence hero and founding president Jomo Kenyatta — alongside Cabinet secretary Francis Muthaura and former police commissioner Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hussein Ali with murder, deportation, persecution, rape and inhumane acts allegedly committed in retaliation against supporters of Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

Deadly clashes erupted after Kenya’s disputed 2007 presidential election, including indiscriminate bow and arrow, machete and gunfire attacks that killed more than 1,000.

“These six are the persons most responsible according to our evidence,” Moreno Ocampo told reporters in The Hague. He asked judges to confirm the charges and order the six suspects to turn themselves in to the war crimes tribunal.

Judges will study the prosecutor’s evidence and likely make their decision early next year.

In Kenya, President Mwai Kibaki said the government had intensified security around the country to protect lives and property of all citizens. Kibaki also said the government is committed to establishign a local tribunal to deal with post-election violence, an idea that has resurfaced only this week as the Moreno Ocampo announcement lommed.

“As a nation we must also focus on the need for national healing and reconciliation. This is paramount as we move forward on the path of national peace and unity,” the Kibaki statement said. “I appeal to Kenyans to remain calm. The government will remain vigilant and ensure that the rights of its citizens and the dignity of the nation are upheld.”

Moreno Ocampo said he expects the suspects to surrender voluntarily. He also asked them to not contact each other, to not try to interfere with the investigation or trial, or commit new crimes.

The clashes erupted along tribal lines following an announcement that Kibaki — a Kikuyu — had won a vote that opponents said was rigged. A bloodbath was stopped only after former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan mediated a peace agreement that created a coalition government in which Odinga was appointed prime minister.

Kenya attempted to set up a tribunal but parliament shut it down and no major figure has ever faced justice. The ICC took over the case after the failure to prosecute suspects in Kenya.

The clashes severely damaged Kenya’s reputation. The East African country has the region’s largest economy and has long been regarded as a haven of stability in a region roiled by war.

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Chicago elections board Chairman Langdon Neal said crews will work overtime to reprogram and retest 530 machines being used for early voting and an additional 4,200 destined for the Nov. 2 election. The mistake in the Green Party candidate’s name appears on a review screen that allows voters to double-check their selections and not on the screen where the vote is registered. It also is not on paper ballots, Neal said.

He said the board became aware of the typo Wednesday and called Whitney’s lawyer Thursday morning. But Green Party Chairman Phil Huckelberry said a party member found the mistake Tuesday and was brushed off by city election officials for a day.

“We don’t have any idea what affect that has had on voters,” Huckelberry said. “I think something needs to be done above and beyond what they’re doing.”

Not only has the mistake made Chicago a laughingstock, he said, but “our candidate … has been tagged with a name that really isn’t that nice.”

Early voting began Monday, and about 5,000 ballots have been cast, though that number includes military and overseas paper ballots that weren’t affected, election officials said. The mistake will continue to appear on early voting machines until the weekend, and a notice alerting voters about the problem will appear in the city’s 54 early voting locations until then.

Neal apologized for the mistake, which he blamed on a private vendor hired by the board. He dismissed allegations that the typo could’ve been intentional.

“No one at the Chicago Board of Elections or a vendor would ever do anything to, in any way, negatively affect the integrity of the election, the integrity of this office,” Neal said. “That’s our reputation and that’s our history.”

He estimated the mistake will cost in the “low tens of thousands” of dollars to fix.

Asked if election officials would spend the time – and money – to correct the mistake if it didn’t involve loaded racial language, Neal replied, “It certainly makes it more embarrassing.”

Whitney faces Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn, Republican state Sen. Bill Brady and Libertarian Lex Green in the election.

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Politics is a dirty business, as one candidate for Congress in Virginia has learned after raunchy photos of her were leaked on the Internet on Tuesday.

Krystal Ball, an accountant running against incumbent GOP Rep. Rob Wittman, called the leak “outrageous” and “incredibly sexist.”

Ball said the photos, showing her wearing a Santa hat and simulating sex acts with her ex-husband, were taken at a costume party six years ago.

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CHICAGO – Mulling over a possible run for mayor of Chicago, a defiant Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., spoke out publicly for the first time on Friday about potentially damning details that emerged in former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s recent corruption trial.

Prosecutors dropped a bombshell when they said in court a former state official told them Jackson attended a meeting where a businessman offered to raise $1 million for Blagojevich’s campaign if the governor appointed Jackson to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.

Speaking on WLS Radio’s “The Don Wade and Roma Show,” Jackson said he was at the Oct. 28, 2008, meeting in a Chicago restaurant with several prominent members of the city’s Indian-American community but never heard talk about a donations-for-Senate-seat exchange.

One reason he couldn’t participate in the discussion was because other attendees at one point started speaking in a foreign language — possibly Hindi, he said — which he could not understand.

“I did not participate in any part of that conversation nor do I even remember hearing it,” Jackson said.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the possible development of a third regional airport in the southern Chicago suburb of Peotone, he said.

In the Friday interview, Jackson, the son of civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson, also broached the possibility of charges.

“I assume that (prosecutors) have no evidence or they should have brought a charge,” he said. “If I’m a conspirator — bring it on. But I can’t possibly be a conspiracy to that which I am not a part of or have no knowledge of.”

Blagojevich’s trial ended last month with jurors deadlocked on 23 counts, including allegations he attempted to sell or trade an appointment to Obama’s old Senate seat for a top job or campaign cash. They convicted him on just one charge — lying to the FBI.

Blagojevich, who has denied wrongdoing, is slated to be retried on the deadlocked counts in January. Rep. Jackson’s name is likely to come up at least as often as it did in the first trial. If he does decide to run for Chicago mayor, the retrial could coincide with the campaign.

Mayor Richard M. Daley recently said he would not seek a seventh term, setting off speculation about candidates. The mayoral election is in February, but would-be candidates only have until Nov. 22 to file petitions to run.

Asked if he’d be at ease about his name emerging at the retrial while campaigning, Jackson responded, “No, I’m not at ease with it. Who could possibly be at ease with issues that could divert the attention of a very serious debate about the city’s economic future?”

The prospect of such diversions, he said, would be a consideration as he decided about entering the mayoral race.

Jackson, a Democratic congressman from Chicago’s South Side and adjacent suburbs, has said since Blagojevich’s arrest in December 2008 that he knew nothing about any alleged scheme to use campaign fundraising to buy his way into the Senate.

In reiterating that Friday, Jackson complained that the scrutiny of him has been unfair.

“Whatever happened to the idea that someone is innocent in America until proven guilty?” he said. “I have gone through 20 months of unprecedented accusations — unprecedented besmirching of my character.”

A phone message left Friday with Jackson’s Chicago office by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.

While his congressional seat appears safe in the November election — he has won it since 1995 with more than 80 percent of the vote each time — his association with the Blagojevich case has dimmed what once seemed a radiant political future.

Isaac Hayes, Jackson’s GOP challenger, criticized his opponent’s claim of being in the 2008 meeting but not being able to follow the conversation because it was in another language.

“He should resign now and save himself further embarrassment,” Hayes said in a statement.

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LINCOLN, Del. – Republican Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell is making light of comments she made more than a decade ago about having dabbled in witchcraft when she was in high school.

“How many of you didn’t hang out with questionable folks in high school?” she asked fellow Republicans at a GOP picnic in southern Delaware on Sunday.

“There’s been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now,” O’Donnell jokingly assured the crowd.

Rove, the former GOP strategist and adviser to President George W. Bush, has suggested that O’Donnell’s win in last week’s GOP primary cost Republicans a chance to retake the Senate seat long held by Democrat Joe Biden before he was elected vice president.

O’Donnell, a conservative Christian activist, rode a surging tide of tea party activism to an upset victory over GOP moderate Michael Castle, Delaware’s longtime congressman and former two-term governor. She faces Democratic county executive Chris Coons in November.

O’Donnell’s comments about witchcraft were made during a 1999 taping of comedian Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” show.

“I dabbled into witchcraft. I never joined a coven,” she said on the show, a clip of which hit the Internet as O’Donnell canceled Sunday appearances on two national news shows, citing commitments to attend church and the GOP picnic in Delaware.

“I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do,” O’Donnell told Maher.

“One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that,” she said. “We went to a movie and then had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.”

Russ Murphy, executive director of the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, a group that joined in the tea party effort to propel O’Donnell to Tuesday’s primary victory, said the focus on her comments about witchcraft was just another attempt by pundits and political opponents to discredit her.

“They’re going to be pulling for straws from the sky to do anything to stop this momentum, and they don’t realize it’s not going to work,” he said.

O’Donnell’s victory in the primary came after a bruising campaign in which her supporters and Castle’s, led by state GOP chairman Tom Ross, traded attack ads, with Ross saying O’Donnell was a liar and a fraud who couldn’t be elected dogcatcher.

Ross did not attend Sunday’s Sussex County Republican Committee picnic. Sussex County GOP chairman Ron Sams said Ross was in Washington trying to drum up support from the national GOP campaign committees.

Despite her improbable primary victory, O’Donnell sounded upbeat about her chances in November.

“We’re going to win this by uniting the party,” she told supporters. “I’m very confident that we’re going to win this election.”

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Tea Party’s Carl Paladino Who Sent Racist Emails Wins N.Y. GOP Gov Nomination

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Carl Paladino, the Tea Party candidate who won the Republican primary for the nomination for Governor of New York,  has a history of controversial veiws and racist jokes. Paladino sent a video, popular on the neo-Nazi website, Stormfront, showing African tribesmen titled “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal,” a picture of Barack Obama dressed like a pimp and Michelle Obama dressed like a prostitute, a picture of a plane crashing into a group of Africans with the title “Run Niggers Run” and a video called “Proof The Irish Discovered Africa” that featured monkeys dancing in emails that were recently uncovered.

Paladino also sent several pornograpic videos in his emails, including one of a woman having sex with a horse.

To See The NSFW Emails Click Here

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — An unemployed military veteran will face no state charges over the $10,440 filing fee for his successful bid to win South Carolina’s Democratic nomination to run for U.S. Senate, the state’s top police official said Friday.

The State Law Enforcement Division also opted not to charge Alvin Greene with misrepresenting his finances to a court, SLED Chief Reggie Lloyd told The Associated Press.

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Greene cooperated with agents and Lloyd said he hoped the findings will put questions about Greene’s finances to rest.

Greene, who did no fundraising, won an unexpected victory over former state lawmaker Vic Rawl in the June 8 Democratic primary to face GOP U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint.

Greene had reported just over $1,000 in monthly income on court paperwork and was appointed a public defender to represent him on a pending obscenity charge. His meager finances raised questions about how he paid the required $10,440 fee to run as a U.S. Senate candidate.

But when state agents reviewed Greene’s bank accounts, they found an October deposit of nearly $6,000, which was Greene’s military exit pay, and about $3,000 deposited early this year from state and federal tax refunds, Lloyd said.

The records matched Greene’s story that the 32-year-old candidate, who has been collecting unemployment benefits since he left the military in August, was able to afford the fee because he saved his money and lived frugally.

“He clearly does not have someone paying him. He just decided to take his money and run for U.S. Senate. There’s no big conspiracy,” Lloyd said.

Greene said Friday that SLED’s findings vindicated him.

“It was just as I said: It came from the Army,” Greene said Friday. “I’m happy.”

Lloyd also wanted to look into whether Greene had misrepresented his financial situation in court. In November, a court-appointed attorney was named to represent Greene on a felony charge of showing obscene Internet photos to a University of South Carolina student.

Court records show Greene reported just over $1,000 in monthly income. Last month, Greene notified the court he had retained a private attorney to represent him.

Greene says he didn’t ask for a court-appointed attorney or intend to mislead anyone about his financial situation.

“They just gave me one,” he said Friday.

SLED agents listened to a recording of Greene’s testimony at a hearing and felt he was honest and didn’t try to deceive anyone, Lloyd said.

Rep. Chip Limehouse, the state lawmaker who asked state police to investigate, says he’s not satisfied with their probe and will continue to ask questions about where Greene got the money for his filing fee.

“Did the $10,400 fall out of the sky?” the Republican from Charleston asked Friday. “This doesn’t clear it up for me.”

Democratic Party leaders were stunned by Greene’s 18-point primary victory. After The Associated Press reported Greene’s arrest, they called for him to withdraw from the race.

Greene has declined to comment on the charge in a series of awkward, often terse news interviews. He has not entered a plea or been indicted.

Greene’s victory prompted some to accuse Republicans of having a hand in the election, a charge GOP leaders have repeatedly brushed aside. A Washington-based watchdog group suggested that South Carolina’s top prosecutor should look into whether someone gave money to Greene. Attorney General Henry McMaster, however, says his office has received no evidence supporting that claim.

Greene insists he’s done nothing wrong and is staying in the race.

Multiple theories have surfaced about Greene’s success, including the possibility that voters simply picked the first name on the ballot.

The state Democratic Party’s executive committee has upheld Greene’s victory, nixing a protest that could have required a new vote.

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From Talking Points Memo

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn has called for a U.S. Attorney investigation into the mysterious candidacy of Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene because he thinks the mischief goes far beyond one wacky race. Clyburn (D-SC), Congress’ highest ranking African American, told TPM in an interview today he believes at least two other Democratic candidates on Tuesday’s primary ballot were planted by people with deep pockets and nefarious motives.

“The party’s choice in the 1st Congressional district lost. The party’s choice for U.S. Senate lost. Sounds like a pattern to me,” Clyburn told TPM. He said Greene was one of three Democratic candidates in three separate races whom the state party didn’t back or even recognize. All three candidates are African American.

One is Gregory Brown, who ran unsuccessfully against Clyburn in the 6th Congressional district. Another is Ben Frasier, who prevailed against state party-favored candidate Robert Burton in the 1st district. Greene, Brown and Frasier have something else in common — they haven’t filed any campaign finance reports with the Federal Elections Commission.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Former Mayor Willie Herenton tried to stir up his low-key congressional campaign Wednesday by claiming again that his race is a good reason to send him to Washington.

Herenton smiled for the cameras at a news conference, donned a white, red and blue cap and held up a sign reading “Just One” — a campaign slogan that reflects Herenton’s contention that Tennessee needs one African-American U.S. representative to fight for Memphis, a majority black city.

Herenton, the city’s first elected black mayor, resigned that office last year to try to unseat incumbent Rep. Steve Cohen in the August Democratic primary. Cohen is white, as are the other 10 people who represent Tennessee in Congress.

“This picture is totally unacceptable,” said Herenton, holding up a campaign handout with a photo of the state’s two U.S. senators and nine representatives.

“I’m truly urban. This is an urban district. It has some critical urban needs that you have to feel, feel within your belly.”

Herenton is pushing the race angle in a campaign criticized as inactive and lacking specifics. Herenton has made few campaign appearances and is far behind Cohen in fundraising. The incumbent has more than $706,000 on hand and Herenton has $8,400, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ database.

Democrats have held the 9th District for three decades and the party’s primary winner is expected to win in November. The district lines roughly equal the city borders, and Cohen in 2006 became the first white to be elected since 1972.

Cohen’s race was an issue in his two previous primaries, but in those elections he faced several black opponents. This time Cohen goes head-to-head with Herenton, providing a referendum on race and politics in Memphis, where about 60 percent of the city’s 671,000 residents are black.

At Wednesday’s news conference Herenton touched on issues he would tackle as a congressman, such as abating poverty, helping urban public schools and the cutting into the trade deficit. But he offered no detailed plans or strategies he would use if elected.

It resembled a sparring match at times, with references to Muhammad Ali and an invitation for reporters to “come at me as hard as you want to.”

Herenton, a former Golden Gloves boxer, traded shots with reporters who asked questions about controversies that arose during his record 18-year mayoral stint. He took jabs at Cohen, saying he has no record and “hasn’t achieved anything” in Congress.

Cohen released a statement later Wednesday touting his experience in the House, including being appointed regional whip and chairman of the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law.

Herenton said many Memphis voters know him well and respect his accomplishments as school superintendent and mayor, which included revitalizing the downtown area, improving Memphis’ economy, and increasing home ownership.

“For thousands of citizens of Memphis, I will always be their mayor,” Herenton said.

On one occasion, Herenton drew a line when comparing blacks and whites, saying the facts show whites have had better opportunities to succeed than blacks. So, more diversity is needed in Congress to level the playing field, Herenton said.

Herenton’s reliance on the black vote is an obvious move, but he’s counting on help from across the spectrum. For example, he said he doesn’t agree with everything about the tea party movement, but he does “agree with some of their frustrations.”

Later, he said: “I’m going to get a lot of white votes; you may not believe this.”

Herenton also brushed aside some questions about a previous federal investigation, saying he has already addressed it.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A candidate lost his bid to become Alabama’s first black governor in the state’s Democratic primary, while voters in another race there ousted a congressman months after he switched from the Democratic party to the GOP.

In New Mexico, Tuesday’s gubernatorial primary set up a general election to decide who becomes the state’s first female governor. Primaries were also held in Mississippi.

In the Alabama governor’s race, U.S. Rep. Artur Davis was overwhelmed by a white Democratic primary opponent who had garnered support from the state’s four major black political groups. Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks won the Democratic primary with 62 percent of the vote to Davis’s 38 percent, with 96 percent of the precincts reporting.

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The state’s traditional civil rights organizations backed Sparks after Davis voted against President Barack Obama’s federal health care overhaul. But Davis, a Harvard lawyer who led Obama’s campaign here in 2008, had endorsements from Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights pioneer from Alabama, and Mobile’s first black mayor, Sam Jones.

Voter Ben Ray picked Sparks, who has taken positions popular with Democrats, calling for an expansion of gambling, including a lottery, and supporting the federal health care plan.

“I just like his position on the education lottery,” Ray said. “I think we need that here.”

The chairman of the black Alabama Democratic Conference, Joe Reed, said Davis was hurt by refusing to seek the endorsements of African-American groups and by voting against the federal health care plan.

Sparks said he went after every vote, and his call for an education lottery proved popular with primary voters. Davis conceded in Birmingham, where he said he would support Sparks in the general election.

Seven GOP candidates for governor were competing in their party’s primary Tuesday, and the top vote-getters were expected to go to a runoff on July 13.

The health care overhaul was also an issue in Alabama’s other big race, where GOP voters in the 5th Congressional district ousted first-term U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, a former Democrat who switched to the Republican Party in December. Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks won with slightly more than 50 percent of the vote in a three-candidate field. He had tea party support and the backing of local GOP leaders still bitter over losing to Griffith in 2008, when he was still a Democrat.

The north Alabama district traditionally has been Democratic, but has leaned Republican in recent years. Four Democrats were competing for their party’s nomination for the seat.

Brooks said Griffith called him to concede. Unofficial results showed Griffith with about 33 percent of the vote.

“We were outspent 8- or 10-to-1 and still won,” said Brooks.

Meanwhile, four-term Alabama Republican U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby easily beat his primary challenger, tea party activist N.C. “Clint” Moser.

Shelby was drawing more than 80 percent of the votes in the unofficial count Tuesday evening. Shelby, 76, is favored to beat Democratic nominee Bill Barnes, a Birmingham lawyer.

Turnout across Alabama was light to moderate.

In New Mexico, the state’s governor’s race will be the third woman against woman gubernatorial general election matchup in U.S. history.

Susana Martinez, the Dona Ana County district attorney, beat her four GOP opponents with 51 percent of the vote in unofficial returns and 95 percent of precincts reporting. Former state GOP chairman Allen Weh had 27 percent.

Martinez will face Democrat Diane Denish, who didn’t have a primary opponent, in the general election.

The primary produced a political first for New Mexico because neither Democrats nor Republicans had ever selected a woman as their gubernatorial nominee.

The Republicans are hoping to win the governorship after eight years of Democratic control under Gov. Bill Richardson, who is term-limited and cannot seek re-election. Denish was Richardson’s running mate in 2002 and 2006.

In Mississippi, no incumbents faced primary challenges.

Alan Nunnelee won the Republican nomination for a north Mississippi congressional seat. Unofficial results from the three-person GOP primary in the 1st District showed Nunnelee, a state senator from Tupelo, defeated former Eupora Mayor Henry Ross and Fox News analyst Angela McGlowan of Oxford.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A well-funded black congressman has a shot at becoming the first African-American to win the Democratic nomination for governor of Alabama, even without the backing of the state’s traditional civil rights organizations.

But a victory for Rep. Artur Davis in Tuesday’s primary may be a short-lived milestone.

In a state that has gone Republican in five of the last six votes for governor, GOP candidates may draw more voters and are jostling for attention, particularly Tim James. The son of a two-term governor, James has aired blunt ads against illegal immigrants that set off fierce Internet debate and gave new momentum to his campaign.

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There is no clear leader in either primary, and voter interest seems sidetracked by economic doldrums and worries over the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatens Alabama shores.

Blacks make up nearly half of those who can vote in the Democratic primary, but Davis may have hurt his chances by scorning the state’s four major black political groups. The four have thrown their support behind his white opponent, state Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks.

“I made a decision to take my case directly to African-American voters,” said Davis, who skipped each group’s mandatory screening process.

Davis won his congressional seat in 2002 without the groups’ support, and some of them fought him again in 2008 when he led Barack Obama’s successful effort to defeat Hillary Clinton in Alabama’s Democratic presidential primary.

Davis said the groups no longer determine who wins black voters’ support, but they still want candidates to put up large sums of money to have their names marked on ballots listing the groups’ endorsements that are handed out on election day outside polling places in black areas.

The president emeritus of the Alabama New South Coalition, Hank Sanders of Selma, said racial politics is nothing new in a state where George Wallace once proclaimed “segregation forever” and served four terms as governor. But he said Davis’ tactic was one he had never seen: spurning the black political group to make himself more appealing to white voters.

“The idea is to attack symbols, such as black leaders and black organizations, in a way that sends messages to white voters without alienating black voters. It’s easy to miscalculate, and Artur Davis miscalculated,” Sanders said.

Not all agree, with Davis picking up endorsements from the black mayors of Selma and Mobile — along with U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who was beaten by Alabama state troopers during a 1965 voting rights march in Selma.

“I am an Alabamian by birth, and I know what it would mean to see Artur Davis sworn in on the same steps where George Wallace stood,” Lewis said.

Mae Thomas, a black auto assembly plant worker from Montgomery, said she isn’t interested in what organizations throw their support behind a candidate.

“Endorsements don’t matter to me. What the person has done speaks for them and the type of person they are,” she said.

Thomas, who’s attending college part-time, she said hasn’t decided whether to vote for Davis because she likes Sparks’ plan to create a state lottery to provide college scholarships.

Sparks has taken positions popular with Democrats, calling for an expansion of gambling, including a lottery, and supporting the federal health care plan. Davis, trying to claim a more centrist position to be viable in the fall, was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the health legislation that was opposed by many in his home state.

Leah Graves, a student at historically black Miles College in Birmingham, said she is leaning toward Davis, but she is troubled by Davis’ health care vote because it stands to benefit many low-income Alabamians.

“Was it something he really believed, or was it politics?” she said.

David Lanoue, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama, said Davis expects African-American voters will vote for the first serious, well-funded black candidate for governor regardless of who has endorsed him.

“It’s a gamble, but it’s a gamble that makes a lot of sense,” Lanoue said.

On the Republican side, James has received more than 800,000 hits on YouTube with his ad promising to end Alabama’s practice of giving its written driver’s exam in a dozen foreign languages. James says he will use English only.

“This is Alabama. We speak English. If you want to live here, learn it,” James says in the ad.

The ad coincided with the resurgence of the immigration debate as Arizona passed a new law that makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime enforced by police.

James’ ad sparked a lot of discussion among the state’s conservatives, including critics who said the ad is counterproductive in a state that has received substantial help from foreign businesses like Mercedes-Benz, Honda and Hyundai. However, a front-runner still has yet to emerge among the seven candidates in the party’s primary race, and incumbent Gov. Bob Riley said he isn’t endorsing anyone.

A runoff will be held July 13 between the top two vote-getters if no one wins a majority — with the likely matchup being James and former two-year college chancellor Bradley Byrne. Behind them in fundraising are Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore — known as the Ten Commandments judge for his unsuccessful fight to display a Ten Commandments monument in a state judicial building — and state Rep. Robert Bentley of Tuscaloosa.

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HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP) — The tea party movement sweeping the U.S. political landscape has benefited from voter mobilization techniques pioneered by the NAACP, and the nation’s oldest civil rights organization needs to rely on that outreach to fight back in the midterm elections, two NAACP leaders said Saturday.

“I think they took a page out of our own play book, and we have to beat them at their own game. We ought to know how to meet them on the front line,” board chairman Roslyn Brock said in a town hall meeting at the NAACP’s annual youth leadership summit.

Brock and Benjamin Todd Jealous, the organization’s president and CEO, urged their members not to become complacent about their achievements or dissuaded by media attention on small, but loud, gatherings of conservative protesters.

“What they’re angry about is we won,” Jealous said.

The voters who elected President Barack Obama in 2008 and the NAACP’s members outnumber the people in the tea party movement, but they’re not speaking up, Jealous said.

“That majority of people hasn’t gone anywhere but to their couch. We could win again if we could get them off the couch,” Jealous said.

The NAACP Leadership 500 Summit focuses on engaging younger members of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. About 350 people are attending this weekend’s conference in Hollywood.

Brock, a health care executive, founded the summit five years ago. She was elected board chairman in February, and she and Jealous are the youngest people to hold their positions in the 101-year-old National Association for the Advancement for Colored People.

As it tries to engage a younger generation who thinks about civil rights in broader terms in a multiethnic society, the NAACP must focus on education, health care, economic opportunity and immigration, they said.

“The challenge we have is to make sure this country understands we have a movement defined by where the black community is right now, but it ultimately is pointed in the direction the rest of the country needs to go,” Jealous said.

The NAACP has joined other civil rights groups seeking to throw out Arizona’s new immigration law, and Jealous is among critics who say new textbook guidelines in Texas water down the teaching of the civil rights movement and slavery.

Everything connects to civil rights, such as decreases in education funding when spending on prisons has increased, Jealous said.

The NAACP, too, needs to recognize that it also has failed to spend more time and money in urban centers, instead of in more affluent communities where the organization’s core membership resides, he said.

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HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. – David Paterson has launched a campaign for a full four-year term as New York’s governor.

Paterson kicked off his campaign Saturday morning at Hofstra University, where he attended law school.

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Top 10 Black Politicians

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He began by boldly predicting victory, to the cheers of supporters.

Paterson has stops later in the day at Rochester and on Sunday inwestern New York, becoming the first Democrat in the race, but probably not the last.

Political pundits are predicting Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, will challenge Paterson in a Democratic primary. Cuomo has remained mum about his future, but has raised more than $16 million compared to Paterson’s $3 million.

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NEW ORLEANS — Frustrated by term-limited Mayor Ray Nagin’s leadership of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, voters elected Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu to succeed him Saturday, turning to a political scion to speed up the city’s recovery.

Landrieu, 49, became the majority-black city’s first white mayor since 1979, the year his father Moon left the office. The mayor-elect, a moderate Democrat, won in a landslide over a field of 10 opponents in a campaign that concluded as Carnival celebrations and preparations for the New Orleans Saints’ appearance in the Super Bowl took place.

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Landrieu’s victory party was a nod to both: the ballroom of a the Roosevelt hotel — recently reopened after a post-Katrina restoration — was festooned with Saints-themed black and gold balloons. A roving brass band played Mardi Gras tunes and he prefaced his victory speech by leading the crowd in the Saints’ “Who Dat” cheer.

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“We’re all going together and we’re not leaving anybody behind,” he shouted to a jubilant crowd as family members, including his father and his sister, U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, stood beside him.

With all of the precincts reporting, Landrieu had 66 percent of the vote.

The campaign also focused on the city’s violent crime and slumping finances. Landrieu, who lost to Nagin in a runoff four years ago, was a welcome change for some voters who grew frustrated with the city’s current mayor. Little known outside New Orleans before Katrina, Nagin became a central, and sometimes controversial figure, in the city’s struggle to recover. Though he won re-election as he courted black voters in the 2006 campaign, Nagin notoriously pledged after the hurricane that New Orleans would be a “chocolate city” again, offending many whites.

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Polls showed his popularity fell sharply in the years after the storm.

“I certainly don’t want another Ray Nagin — a businessman,” said Charlotte Ford, a 76-year-old semi-retiree and registered Republican who voted for Landrieu. “They balk instead of finding out what works, how the system works.”

Ursula Murphy and her husband, Bill, voted early so they could avoid traffic caused by the parades. Both cast votes for Landrieu. “After eight years of negative, we’re going to see some positive,” Bill Murphy said.

CHICAGO — That historically all-white club known as the U.S. Senate is likely to lose what little diversity it has after November’s elections.

Two white men will be competing for President Barack Obama’s former seat in Illinois, now held by Roland Burris, the chamber’s lone African-American. Appointed by the scandal-tainted former governor, Burris won’t be seeking a full term.

In contests in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, black candidates face daunting challenges to joining the august body, from difficulty raising cash to lack of name recognition to formidable rivals.

Blacks comprise 12.2 percent of the nation’s population, but you wouldn’t know it in the 100-member Senate. Come next year, the total number could add up to zero.

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“It certainly is not a desirable state of affairs,” said David Bositis, a senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

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Bositis noted that blacks don’t make up the majority population in any state and in states where there are large numbers of blacks, as in the South, there are racial divisions that make getting elected difficult.

Florida is more likely to produce the next Hispanic senator than it is the next black senator.

Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is locked in a close race with Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican Senate nomination and the chance to succeed GOP Sen. Mel Martinez, who left before his term ended. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who was elected in 2006, is the Senate’s only Hispanic member and is one of only six Hispanics elected since the 1920s.

Rep. Kendrick Meek, one of 41 African-Americans in the House, is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in Florida, but polls show him trailing both Rubio and Crist.

In Texas, Republican Michael Williams is looking at running for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat. Hutchison is challenging Republican Gov. Rick Perry. Williams is a commissioner on the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the oil and gas industries in the state.

In North Carolina, Chapel Hill attorney Kenneth Lewis, a former state fundraiser for Obama, is one of three leading Democrats seeking to challenge GOP Sen. Richard Burr. Another black Democrat, Nathaniel Cooper, has raised just $1,600 to compete in the May 4 Democratic primary.

In Georgia, former Rockdale County chief of staff R.J. Hadley, a first-time candidate, hopes to take on Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson but has not yet raised the minimum $5,000 filing fee.

Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University political science and law professor, said that party leaders need to be committed to a diversified legislative body and that qualified black candidates with money must step up to try to get elected.

“One of the reasons why it’s difficult for minorities, especially blacks, to win statewide is the cost of campaigns,” she said. “It takes millions of dollars to run a Senate campaign.”

On Tuesday, neither of the two black challengers in the Illinois’ primary — Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson, a Democrat, and little-known former suburban Chicago alderman John Arrington, a Republican — could compete against the better-funded and better-known candidates who captured the major party nominations.

Five-term Rep. Mark Kirk won the GOP nomination and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias walked away with the Democratic nod. Both are white.

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Illinois has a history of sending black senators to Washington, with three of the nation’s four black senators in modern times coming from the state.

The first black senator in the 20th century was Edward W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican who served from 1967 until 1979. The first to hold the Illinois seat was Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat who won it in 1992. She lost six years later to Republican Peter Fitzgerald, who is white and didn’t seek a second term. Obama captured the seat in 2004 by trouncing another black candidate, conservative Republican Alan Keyes. Obama relinquished the seat when he was elected president, and it was filled by Burris.

Burris was appointed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich after Blagojevich was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Obama’s seat.

Obama’s former seat is now a prime takeover target for Republicans. The attention on it has intensified since the GOP’s upset win in Massachusetts last month claimed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

For some in Illinois, the bigger embarrassment would be for Obama’s old seat to fall to the GOP.

“It needs to be a Democrat,” Chicago teacher Tina Fakhrid-Deen said.

For his part, Kirk borrows a line from Massachusetts’s new U.S. senator: “I think that this seat is not owned by any one particular group or politician. It’s owned by the people of Illinois.”

From MSNBC:

WASHINGTON – President Obama is reconstituting the team that helped him win the White House to counter Republican challenges in the midterm elections and recalibrate after political setbacks that have narrowed his legislative ambitions.

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Mr. Obama has asked his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee House, Senate and governor’s races to stave off a hemorrhage of seats in the fall. The president ordered a review of the Democratic political operation — from the White House to party committees — after last week’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, aides said.

In addition to Mr. Plouffe, who will primarily work from the Democratic National Committee in consultation with the White House, several top operatives from the Obama campaign will be dispatched across the country to advise major races as part of the president’s attempt to take greater control over the midterm elections, aides said.

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From the Washington Post:

President Obama on Wednesday blamed the Democrats’ stunning loss of their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate on his administration’s failure to give voice to the economic frustrations of the middle class, a disconnect that White House aides vowed to quickly address as they continue to work to advance the president’s agenda.

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Obama said the relentless pursuit of his domestic policies — and a failure to adequately explain their virtues — had left Americans with a “feeling of remoteness and detachment” from the flurry of government actions in Washington.

“We were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.

Click here to read more.

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Buy the book here.

Roland Martin, noted Black journalist and host of TV One’s Washington Watch, has released a new book that chronicles his experience reporting on President Barack Obama’s historic ascendancy to the highest office in the land.

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The First: President Barack Obama’s Road to the White House (Third World Press) begins in December 2006 – when Obama had yet to announce his candidacy – and follows the campaign trail with Martin offering his perspective on key players and events.

RELATED: Watch Video From Roland Martin’s Exclusive Interview With Michelle Obama

The First also includes interviews with Dr. Cornel West, Rep. John Lewis, Spike Lee, Maxine Waters, Michael Eric Dyson, and Obama himself after his win in Iowa.

Check out an excerpt from the book in which Martin describes working at CNN the night Obama won the Iowa caucus:

“The fifth floor of 1 Time Warner Center, home of our Election Center set, was buzzin’. Crews were still assembling the set, dozens and dozens of people were running back and forth, peering at computer screens, looking at polling data, all to get ready for the first night.

Then 7p.m. struck and we were off and running. Our A‐team of The Best Political Team on Television were all on the set, and I was one of several political contributors waiting in the wings. I was watching our coverage and working my sources in the Sen. Barack Obama campaign.

I knew his every move and what he was doing at that moment because I was communicating with several of his top folks.

At one point I heard one of our reporters say they weren’t sure where Obama was watching election returns, and I sent an e‐mail to my “handler” Stephanie Kotuby, “He’s having dinner with friends and family.”

As the night progressed, it was clear Obama was heading for an upset victory.

When he won, folks were stunned. Forget the professionals. No one thought this black political upstart from Chicago was going to defeat the likes of former VP candidate John Edwards and former first lady, Sen. Hillary Clinton. But he did, and folks were going on and on about what it meant for an African American candidate to win nearly all‐white Iowa.”

Click here for more information on the book.

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BOSTON — In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to win the U.S. Senate seat held by the late Edward M. Kennedy for nearly half a century, leaving President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marring the end of his first year in office.

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Addressing an exuberant victory celebration Tuesday night, Brown declared he was “ready to go to Washington without delay” as the crowd chanted, “Seat him now.” Democrats indicated they would, deflating a budding controversy over whether they would try to block Brown long enough to complete congressional passage of the health care plan he has promised to oppose.

“The people of Massachusetts have spoken. We welcome Scott Brown to the Senate and will move to seat him as soon as the proper paperwork has been received,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin said he would notify the Senate on Wednesday that Brown had been elected.

The loss by the once-favored Democrat Martha Coakley in the Democratic stronghold was a stunning embarrassment for the White House after Obama rushed to Boston on Sunday to try to save the foundering candidate. Her defeat on Tuesday signaled big political problems for the president’s party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide.

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Brown’s victory was the third major loss for Democrats in statewide elections since Obama became president. Republicans won governors’ seats in Virginia and New Jersey in November.

“I have no interest in sugarcoating what happened in Massachusetts,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the head of the Senate Democrats’ campaign committee. “There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient.”

Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president’s health care legislation. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters. The trouble may go deeper: Democratic lawmakers could read the results as a vote against Obama’s broader agenda, weakening their support for the president. And the results could scare some Democrats from seeking office this fall.

The Republican will finish Kennedy’s unexpired term, facing re-election in 2012.

Brown led by 52 per cent to 47 percent with all but 3 percent of precincts counted. Turnout was exceptional for a special election in January, with light snow reported in parts of the state. More voters showed up at the polls Tuesday than in any non-presidential general election in Massachusetts since 1990.

One day shy of the first anniversary of Obama’s swearing-in, the election played out amid a backdrop of animosity and resentment from voters over persistently high unemployment, Wall Street bailouts, exploding federal budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

“I voted for Obama because I wanted change. … I thought he’d bring it to us, but I just don’t like the direction that he’s heading,” said John Triolo, 38, a registered independent who voted in Fitchburg.

He said his frustrations, including what he considered the too-quick pace of health care legislation, led him to vote for Brown.

For weeks considered a long shot, Brown seized on voter discontent to overtake Coakley in the campaign’s final stretch. His candidacy energized Republicans, including backers of the “tea party” protest movement, while attracting disappointed Democrats and independents uneasy with where they felt the nation was heading.

A cornerstone of Brown’s campaign was his promise to vote against the health care plan.

Though the president wasn’t on the ballot, he was on many voters’ minds.

Coakley called Brown conceding the race, and Obama talked to both Brown and Coakley, congratulating them on the race.

The Democrat said the president told her: “We can’t win them all.”

Brown will be the first Republican senator from Massachusetts in 30 years.

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Even before the first results were announced, administration officials were privately accusing Coakley of a poorly run campaign and playing down the notion that Obama or a toxic political landscape had much to do with the outcome.

Coakley’s supporters, in turn, blamed that very environment, saying her lead dropped significantly after the Senate passed health care reform shortly before Christmas and after the Christmas Day attempted airliner bombing that Obama himself said showed a failure of his administration.

Days before the polls closed, Democrats were fingerpointing and laying blame.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, head of the House Democrats’ campaign effort, said Coakley’s loss won’t deter his colleagues from continuing to blame the previous administration.

“President George W. Bush and House Republicans drove our economy into a ditch and tried to run away from the accident,” he said. “President Obama and congressional Democrats have been focused repairing the damage to our economy.”

At Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel, giddy Republicans cheered, chanted “USA” and waved the “tea party” version of the American flag.

Even before Brown won, the grass-roots network fueled by antiestablishment frustrations, sought credit for the victory, much like the liberal MoveOn.org did in the 2006 midterm elections when Democrats rose to power.

GOP chairman Michael Steele said Brown’s “message of lower taxes, smaller government and fiscal responsibility clearly resonated with independent-minded voters in Massachusetts who were looking for a solution to decades of failed Democrat leadership.”

Wall Street watched the election closely. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 116 points, and analysts attributed the increase to hopes the election would make it harder for Obama to make his changes to health care. That eased investor concerns that profits at companies such as insurers and drug makers would suffer.

Across Massachusetts, voters who had been bombarded with phone calls and dizzied with nonstop campaign commercials for Coakley and Brown gave a fitting turnout despite intermittent snow and rain statewide.

Galvin, who discounted sporadic reports of voter irregularities throughout the day, predicted turnout ranging from 1.6 million to 2.2 million, 40 percent to 55 percent of registered voters. The Dec. 8 primary had a scant turnout of about 20 percent.

Voters considered national issues including health care and the federal budget deficits.

Fears about spending drove Karla Bunch, 49, to vote for Brown. “It’s time for the country, for the taxpayers, to take back their money,” she said. And Elizabeth Reddin, 65, voted for Brown because she said she was turned off by the Democrat’s negative advertisements, saying: “The Coakley stuff was disgusting.”

In an exclusive editorial penned for the NY Post, former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, Jr., finally ended the speculation over his potential run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Here’s an excerpt of Ford’s big announcement:

It’s true: I am strongly considering running for the United States Senate.

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I do so because our best as a nation has always come when we test our ideas and ourselves, and when we trust competition to refine the steel of our convictions and the truth of our arguments.

Some have already questioned whether I should be running.

Others are falsifying my record in public life.

New Yorkers deserve a free election.

New Yorkers expect a politics where politicians do what’s right based on independent judgment, free of political bosses trying to dictate.

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And New Yorkers want an honest and serious debate about how to grow our economy, create new jobs downstate and upstate and keep New York state and our country safe.

But first, some facts about me:

I moved to New York more than three years ago, have been a New York resident for more than a year and am a registered voter in New York City. My wife and I both work in Manhattan, proudly call lower Manhattan home and plan to start and raise a family in New York.

I am pro-choice — have always been since I entered politics almost 15 years ago. My cumulative grade with NARAL during 10 years in Congress was right at 80 percent. Any assertions to the contrary are false.

Click here to read more.

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U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, 42, wasted little time launching his campaign after Barack Obama’s presidential victory last year. The prospects seemed promising for the Harvard-educated lawyer, a moderate with proven appeal to white voters who will be running in a June Democratic primary where black voters could account for as much as half the turnout.

But a year in, Davis is finding that racial prejudice is not the biggest obstacle to presiding at the Capitol where Gov. George C. Wallace once proclaimed “segregation forever.”

Among those criticizing him are Joe Reed, founder and longtime chairman of the black wing of the state Democratic Party, and former Birmingham Mayor Richard Arrington, who was that city’s first black mayor.

Across the South, a legitimate black candidate for governor is a rarity, but finding old-fashioned political opposition within black political ranks is not.

Ferrel Guillory, an expert in Southern politics at the University of North Carolina, says there is a “generational cleavage” caused by the emergence of black leaders like Obama and Davis who are too young to have been part of the civil rights era. Those who were on the front lines of that movement want to maintain their influence.
Davis, a three-term congressman who was Obama’s campaign chairman in Alabama, is no stranger to the phenomenon. Reed and Arrington opposed him in 2002 when he recruited strong white support to beat an incumbent black congressman with a long civil rights resume, and again in 2008 when many black leaders at first supported Hillary Clinton over Obama, warning that America wasn’t ready to elect a black president.

“There is a group of insiders in this state who benefit from protecting the status quo,” Davis said.

D’Linell Finley, an expert in minority politics at Auburn University Montgomery, says some Democrats are also concerned that if Davis tops the ticket in November, some white voters will cast straight Republican tickets and doom other Democrats.

“They may have some merit,” Finley said.

After all, Obama received only about 10 percent of the white vote in Alabama, according to some exit polls, and did worse among white Alabama voters than John Kerry four years earlier. In modern times, no black candidate has won any statewide office in the executive branch of Alabama’s government. Only about 25 percent of the state’s registered voters are black.

Davis and Obama got to know each other at Harvard law school, but Davis’ political record is much more moderate — and on health care legislation, a sensitive issue for black voters, he has veered to the conservative side. Criticism from Reed was fast and pointed when Davis was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against the health care overhaul bill.

Reed said Davis voted “no” to help himself in the governor’s race by appealing to more conservative voters, not to help constituents in his mostly black, low-income district that stretches across the civil rights battlegrounds of Birmingham and Selma.

“He is not likely to get a ‘profiles in courage’ award when any political issue makes him uncomfortable,” Reed said.

For many black leaders from the civil rights generation, health care legislation “is a litmus test,” Guillory said.

But Davis said he rejects Reed’s “insinuation that there is a uniquely ‘black’ way of understanding an issue, and I strongly suspect that most Alabamians will as well.”

Reed, 72, didn’t take kindly to criticism from someone 30 years his junior.

“My record is second to none, and I was doing this when Congressman Davis was making mud cakes under the shade tree,” he said.

Reed has been a power broker in Alabama politics since about the time Davis was born. He is chairman of the party’s black wing, the Alabama Democratic Conference. He’s also the No. 2 official at the state teachers’ organization, which has more than 100,000 members and has contributed to Davis’ white opponent in the Democratic primary, Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks.
Sparks is running with the support of Arrington, 75, the first black mayor of Birmingham.

“As good a man as Artur Davis is, I’m not sure he can win and, frankly, I’m concerned that with him at the top of the ticket I’m not sure what that might mean for Democratic control of the House and state Senate,” Arrington said.

Even if Davis wins the primary, he could face an uphill battle. Republicans have won every Alabama governor’s race but one since 1986. Republican incumbent Bob Riley has served two terms and can’t run again, but the GOP has a big field of contenders.
Davis is focusing his campaign on rewriting Alabama’s heavily amended constitution and enacting tougher government ethics standards, reforms that appeal to middle-class voters. It’s his opponent, Sparks, who is stressing issues that traditionally appeal to black Alabama voters — creating a state lottery and expanding gambling to provide money for education and Medicaid. Sparks has also endorsed the federal health care legislation.

Still, Sparks is trying to win a June primary where nearly half the vote is traditionally black. His chances of winning go up if Davis alienates significant numbers of black voters and can’t manage to appeal to white voters.

Byrdie Larkin, a political scientist at historically black Alabama State University, said Davis has positioned himself as more conservative than Sparks, but that might not be enough for him to capture the white votes needed to win.

“They might see Davis as an answer to their concerns, but for a majority of Alabamians, race is still a factor,” she said.

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From The Root:

This weekend Houston made history, electing Anisse Parker the first openly gay mayor of a major American city. The Texan coup was a clear victory for advocates of civil rights and marriage equality, but also stands to erode the consistent—and incorrect—presumption that black Americans are reflexively anti-gay. Parker won the runoff election with nearly 54 percent of the vote in a city that is 25 percent African American—against an African-American opponent, no less. Despite a series of mailings and smears targeted at Parker and engineered by conservatives, the 40 percent of black voters who were undecided in mid-October seem to have gravitated toward Parker and pushed her over the top. What’s more, late-stage polls suggest that 77 percent of voters “didn’t care about Parker’s sexuality.”

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Black Americans should be glad of this outcome. Parker will, by all accounts, prove a competent and energetic executive and a Democratic foil to neo-secessionist Governor Rick Perry. And this victory is an opportunity to openly affirm the solidarity on civil rights and equal representation that has been the bedrock of social progress in the country.

Click here to read more.

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From NY Times:

ATLANTA — Kasim Reed, a lawyer and former state legislator, was elected mayor of Atlanta by a margin of 714 votes, according to a recount of last week’s vote that concluded on Wednesday afternoon.

His opponent, Mary Norwood, a City Council member, requested the recount, which failed to reverse the outcome of last week’s runoff election. Under Georgia law, a recount is permitted when the margin of victory is less than 1 percent of the total vote.

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The narrow victory, out of 84,000 votes cast, gives control over the city often known as the capital of the South to Mr. Reed, 40, a former state senator and former campaign manager for Mayor Shirley Franklin. Mr. Reed rocketed to first place from third in the campaign’s final months after he pledged to bolster crime-fighting in the city and consolidated the votes of black residents, who had supported several candidates in the primary.

Click here to read more.

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Reed Certified As Winner Of Close Atlanta Mayoral Election

Slim Win For Atlanta Mayor Reveals Weakened Black Electorate

From CNN:

Atlanta, Georgia — An elections board certified Kasim Reed on Saturday as the winner of the Atlanta mayoral runoff election by a margin of 620 votes.

Barry Garner, director of Fulton County’s elections board, told CNN on Saturday that former state senator Reed was declared the winner of last Tuesday’s runoff election against City Councilwoman Mary Norwood.

Garner said Reed received 42,348 votes compared with Norwood’s 41,728.

Click here to read more.

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Slim Win For Atlanta Mayor Reveals Weakened Black Electorate

Reed’s Lead Widens After Provisional Ballot Count In Atlanta

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From the Miami Herald:

ATLANTA — When the final votes are counted, it’s likely the black political machine that integrated Atlanta’s City Hall – and kept it that way for four decades – will have pulled through one more time to deliver a fifth consecutive black mayor.

Barely.

Unofficial results in this week’s mayoral runoff show voters elected former state Sen. Kasim Reed over white councilwoman Mary Norwood by a mere 715 votes, with a recount inevitable.

No matter what those final numbers say, the fissures in the machine were exposed, its future viability cast in doubt.

Atlanta’s black population has shrunk and its white population grown since its current mayor, Shirley Franklin, was elected in 2001. Its voting rolls are filled with newcomers unfamiliar with Atlanta’s habit of assigning its business interests to whites and its political interests to blacks. The reality is sinking in that black political power here is not as strong or united as it once was, and is destined to weaken as more whites seek office and more blacks shed their civil rights-era sentimentality.

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From the Wall Street Journal:

As Atlanta’s mayoral race entered its final weekend before a Dec. 1 runoff election, an African-American former state senator and a feisty city councilwoman who could become the city’s first white mayor in nearly 40 years appeared to be running neck and neck.

In the weeks since the Nov. 3 general election in which Councilwoman Mary Norwood finished well ahead of two main African-American challengers, black city leaders have consolidated support around Sen. Kasim Reed, who has surged to a statistical dead heat.

The contest is widely expected to be decided by one of the tightest margins since Atlanta’s black majority gained political clout in the 1970s. A WSB-TV Channel 2/Insider Advantage sampling on Nov. 20 had the two candidates tied at 46% for the runoff, with 8% undecided. Ms. Norwood won 46% of the vote in the general election, while Mr. Reed came in second with 36%; the runoff is required because no candidate received 50%-plus needed to win outright.

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From The Atlantic:

Conservative candidate Doug Hoffman has seen his chances slip away of overtaking Democrat Bill Owens in the vote tallies in New York’s 23rd congressional district, but he’s now circulating an email to supporters announcing he’s revoked his concession and that “ACORN and the unions” tampered with election results to prevent him from winning.

The email, which is pretty long for a campaign fundraising note, lists all the regularities Hoffman has counted, and it reads sort of like a manifesto of all that’s fishy about the election results, according to him.

The Washington Independent’s David Weigel thinks this isn’t the type of behavior that will help Hoffman in a potential 2010 rematch against Owens, who will have only served one year in Congress by then. (Weigel also reports that ACORN has said it had no volunteers in the district.) Nonetheless, Hoffman is blasting ACORN and trying to raise money for a re-canvass of the district.

At the end of the email, Hoffman alleges: “P.S. I ran a different kind of campaign, one where Conservatives, Republicans, Libertarians, Tea Party and 9/12 activists rallied around. ACORN, the unions and Democratic Party were scared, and that’s why they tampered with the ballots of voters in NY-23…”

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From the NY Post:

The city’s first African-American mayor blasted the country’s first black president for leaving Bill Thompson in the dust in the mayor’s race this year.

“The president should’ve done more. He found time to go to Virginia, he found time to go to New Jersey and he should’ve been here,” said former Mayor David Dinkins, who was in office from 1990 through 1993.

He was referring to Obama’s stumping with New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who lost to Republican Chris Christie this week, and Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds, who lost the gubernatorial race to GOP candidate Bob McDonnell.

By comparison, the country’s first black president gave the most lukewarm of endorsements to Thompson, who lost to Mayor Bloomberg by a mere 5 points on Tuesday.

First, Obama’s spokesman told the press on a Friday afternoon that he would support Thompson, who sought to be the city’s second black mayor, because Thompson and he are both are both Democrats.

The spokesman went on to praise Bloomberg.

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