National Perspective : Politics : Forbes Seeking Support From Unlikely Source: Black Voters : Campaign: Republican believes message of economic opportunity will resonate. Some view effort as gambit to burnish image with whites, moderates.

Steve Forbes brought his quixotic campaign for black voters to a large family farm here recently, addressing 200 of conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams’ neighbors. Rain tap-tapped on the party tent. Gnats swarmed among the guests. Pork barbecue filled plastic plates.

But fewer than 20 blacks showed up--and half of them were members of Williams’ extended family.

“We invited a lot of local black folks, and I thought we would have had more here,” said Kent Williams, a loyal Republican and member of the local school board who co-hosted the barbecue with his brother and other family members living on the farm. “It’s really hard to get them away from the Democratic Party.”

In his largely self-financed campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, the 52-year-old Forbes often has marched to the beat of his own drummer. In 1996, he pounded a steady drumbeat for the flat tax, all but ignoring social issues. This year, he is seeking to broaden his reputation by courting black voters--recasting himself as a socially concerned politician in sync with the nation’s growing racial diversity.

And unlike most political analysts who view his outreach effort as a calculated gambit to burnish his image with white and moderate Republicans, Forbes appears to believe that his message of economic opportunity will resonate with black voters newly enriched by a booming economy--and tired of being taken for granted by a complacent Democratic Party.

“Expanding economic opportunity for all Americans is the next great civil rights battleground for the 21st century,” Forbes said. “My campaign is demonstrating that this message is not the typical [Republican] political message, but it’s a people message.”

Still, in the cold arithmetic of politics, the numbers don’t seem to add up. About 90% of African Americans register as Democrats. And black Republicans in the two early contest states, Iowa and New Hampshire, are as rare as 90-degree days in January.

For much of the early part of this century, black Americans identified closely with the Republican Party, thanks in large measure to President Lincoln’s emancipation of the slaves. But over the last 35 years, as Democrats pushed voting and other civil rights legislation over GOP objections, black voters have given Democratic candidates the overwhelming share of their support.

‘Making a Case’ Among Black Voters

Forbes, for his part, compares the task of courting voters unlikely to support him to that of a salesman pitching a new product. “You never get an order if you don’t make a case for it and ask to close the deal,” he said.

And pitch he has. Forbes launched his campaign in June with a gala dinner in New York at which many prominent black political leaders were featured. He tapped Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who is African American, to be his national chairman. He has linked himself with black celebrities, such as actor Yaphet Kotto, and hired two African Americans as image consultants to help coordinate his appearances and tailor campaign themes for black audiences.

Mostly he has talked. Forbes appeared in August before the National Medical Assn., a group of black doctors. This month, he campaigned in Tampa, Fla., at the National Baptist Convention USA Inc., which, with more than 7.5 million members, is the nation’s largest black religious organization. He has talked at black churches and to black journalists.

For the most part, the GOP field has been unseen and unheard in the nation’s black communities.

Front-runner George W. Bush, who attracted nearly 30% of the black vote in his reelection campaign for governor of Texas in 1998, initially snubbed black, Latino, Asian and Native American journalists meeting at a convention in Seattle in July.

Bush’s decision to ignore the convention (after a firestorm of controversy, he scheduled a brief pass-through) suggests a calculation that minorities cannot help him get his party’s nomination in the primary, even if they can help him win in the general election.

“To tell the truth, it makes little sense for [Forbes] to reach out to black voters before he’s won the Republican nomination,” said David Bositis, a senior policy analyst at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which tracks black voter behavior. But, he added, “by including blacks in his campaign, it softens his image with suburban Republican women and broadens his base. This would make him more acceptable not to black voters but to a wider range of likely Republican voters.”

Ron Walters, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, agrees but puts it more bluntly. Forbes, he said, is “using blacks to wipe the patina of the right wing off of himself.”

Walters, who has advised Democratic candidates, said Forbes has hooked his star to black GOP activists such as Williams and Blackwell who are better known in specific regions or among white conservatives than they are among black voters nationally. “It’s a very small group of folk who are Republican and well regarded among African Americans,” he said. “That’s why what Forbes is doing, ultimately, isn’t going to be very successful in bringing blacks to his campaign or the Republican Party.”

But Forbes isn’t willing to concede a single vote. He believes that his message--abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, giving workers the right to establish their own health insurance accounts, privatizing the Social Security system--are themes that “cut across lines.”

Herman Cain, a Nebraska businessman who signed on this summer to be a co-chairman of the Forbes campaign, agrees. Speaking passionately about Forbes’ positions on Social Security, health care and tax reform, Cain said he believes black voters would be attracted to Forbes if they listened to what he has to say. “I’m telling everyone, especially blacks, to take a look at Steve Forbes’ message before you reject him because of the party he belongs to,” Cain said.

Forbes Finds It’s Still a Tough Sell

It’s still a tough sell, said some of the blacks attending the Williams’ family barbecue.

Despite the competition from the weather, insects and down-home cooking, Forbes was giving it his best. He talked on and on in a monotone about abolishing the IRS, strengthening the U.S. armed forces and improving the nation’s health insurance system. Then, in summation, he asked for his audience’s support in his quest to be the next president of the United States.

The candidate finished talking and ambled through the crowd, shaking hands and posing for snapshots. High school Principal Bernie Bell said he appreciated Forbes’ willingness to speak to him but admitted he came to the barbecue more out of loyalty to the politically connected Williams family than to give serious thought to voting for a Republican.

Why?

“I’m not sure many of us are going to switch to vote for him in the primary,” Bell said. “This is Democratic country.”