L
EGACY Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
WEDNESDAYS • April 15, 2015
INSIDE The way forward for UNCF - 5 Secular thoughts: God, are you there?- 9 Competition to fund small businesses-12 Students in HR volunteer for credit - 15
Richmond & Hampton Roads
LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
Are black voters ready to vote for Hillary Clinton? CHARLES D. ELLISON NEWS ANALYSIS s Hillary Clinton kicks off her 2016 presidential bid (splashing with all the juggernauting brand force of an album drop) few doubt she’ll win the Democratic nomination. But even if she skates from now into Philly next year as the party standard bearer, there’s still no White House guarantee. A road to victory remains a foggy affair. And of the multiple pathways to a win that will bedevil her campaign, none may be as vexing as the black vote. She’s not her former president
A
husband Bill Clinton and she’s certainly not her former 2008 Democratic primary archrival Barack Obama. While the question of the black vote in this round’s Democratic primary won’t torment her campaign the way it did in 2008 – as far as we can tell at the moment – it’s how she performs in the general election that could be rather problematic. Contrary to popular opinion, African American voter turnout was a little flat in 2014. Three reasons explain that: it was an off cycle, President Obama wasn’t on the ballot, and many jaded black families were dealing with double digit
unemployment. With 2016 around the corner, every authority on the black vote I’ve spoken to is worried we won’t see the kind of motivated black voter turnout this election that we saw in the previous two – simply because, many say, President Obama won’t be running again. The question is keeping many a Democratic strategist up at night: When the time arrives, will black folks deliver? The Clinton camp probably has the best of a year and seven months to figure that out. Her greatest advantage could be a cleared Democratic field as the several other
contenders barely register on the electoral Richter scale. Candidates like former Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) are lucky if pundits even remember their name when rattling off prospects on talk shows. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (DMD) just passed up on a better shot at an open U.S. Senate seat in favor of a quixotic quest for presidential gold. In a recent Pew Research Center poll, an overwhelming 59 percent of Democratic voters gave Hillary Clinton a “good chance” at winning the party nod, compared to only 22 percent who see the same for (continued on page 2)