Black Clergy Courted by GOP

Seldom have black ministers been more popular. Historically wooed by liberal politicians as conduits to African American communities, they are now the darlings of conservatives as well.

In the last year, conservative groups have flown a delegation of ministers, including a dozen from Los Angeles, to Washington to chat about racial profiling with Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and hobnob with conservative scholars at the Heritage Foundation.

California Republican lawmakers have flown ministers of primarily black mega-churches and community chapels, storefronts and sanctuaries to Sacramento for “Pastors Days” and hosted hundreds of them at conservative community-renewal conferences.

A handful of Republican legislators trawl the length of the state, stopping in Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego, where they preach conservative remedies to poverty, unemployment and the spread of AIDS. African American pastors turn out by the hundreds to hear them.

“Not bad, when white Republicans can come to Los Angeles, host a meeting for 400 black pastors, and some Latinos too, without anyone really knowing about it,” boasts state Sen. Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City). “In fact, just weeks ago I spent the night there--in the ‘hood” as the guest of one minister’s family.

Many African American ministers, whose congregants voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2000 presidential election, say they are not yet converted--but make it clear they are listening.

“Of course I know the Republican Party has an objective and an agenda--it’s trying to win favor with the black community through the pastors,” said Bishop Frank Stewart of Zoe Christian Center in Los Angeles. “But I don’t think that’s negative.... They’re saying some things that are interesting to me.”

There is deep desperation on both sides of this would-be relationship.

Stark demographic changes make it clear that if the state Republican Party does not diversify, it will go the way of the dinosaur. Latinos in California supported Democrat Al Gore in 2000 by a 2-to-1 margin. Nationally, 90% of blacks and a majority of Latinos and Asians voted for Gore, while white men voted 62% in favor of Bush and white women were split almost evenly.

Courting minorities “is our No. 1 priority,” said Pamela Mantis, deputy director of outreach for the Republican National Committee.

So the GOP goes on the road. Last year, the RNC held African American outreaches in Memphis, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Arkansas, and earlier this month hosted blacks and Latinos in Mississippi. In mid-April, the party will hold an event targeting Haitian Americans in Miami.

“The African American community has felt abandoned by our party for the last 40 or 50 years,” Mantis said, “and the other side, the Democrats, took advantage of that.”

The desperation on the black ministers’ side is the belief by some that they are taken for granted by the Democrats, and that liberal solutions to urban problems have done little to improve their communities.

Some are drawn to conservative notions like the privatization of Social Security, President Bush’s initiative to give faith-based organizations greater access to federal funding, school vouchers and opposition to abortion.

“My vote is now definitely up for grabs,” said the Rev. James Price of Long Beach Christian Center. Republicans “have definitely said things that make me listen.”

He said he decided he favored privatizing part of Social Security, which would allow individuals to make their own investment choices, during the pastors’ trip to the Heritage Foundation.

“My desire is to bring biblical truths to my congregation and we’re supposed to be good stewards of things that we have,” he said. “Timothy says, in Chapter 5.8, that he who does not provide for his own and those of his household is worse than an infidel and has denied the faith.”

Last month, African American pastors from around the country gathered at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport for the conservative Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education’s annual convention.

The coalition is a nonprofit organization founded by black welfare mother-turned-conservative author Star Parker, best known for her book “Pimps, Whores and Welfare Brats.” It paints liberal Democrats as pimps who buy off black leaders in exchange for their support of a welfare culture. Published in 1997 with a forward by Rush Limbaugh, the book rocketed her to national prominence in conservative circles.

Parker, who now lives in San Clemente, says she enjoys the Republican Party’s praise but questions its support. “Republicans, as a party, are unwilling to acknowledge social problems regarding race,” Parker said. “When I do [conservative] radio shows, racial profiling will come up, they’ll ask me: ‘Well, racial profiling isn’t a big problem, is it?’ And when I say ‘Well, actually it is ... ‘ there’s silence.”

Parker organized the black ministers’ visit to Washington last year. Using donations to her nonprofit, she paid for 47 ministers from Los Angeles, Houston, Philadelphia and Chicago to visit Capitol Hill. She also has organized conferences for pastors featuring conservative stars such as Jack Kemp, Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich and Alan Keyes.

“I start with pastors because they’re socially conservative,” Parker said. “I really don’t care about the politics of it all. I’m interested in seeing my community healed.”

The Rev. Eugene P. Pack, assistant pastor at the Praise and Worship Center in Houston, attended the coalition’s conference to learn more about Bush’s faith-based initiative, which the president hopes will allow churches with social service agencies to gain a greater share of federal dollars.

Pack, who with his wife runs a family assistance and crisis pregnancy center in Houston’s struggling 3rd ward, said he had long ago embraced a conservative message and the Republican Party.

“I tell folks, if you read the platform you’ll find out the majority of you are already Republicans,” Pack said. “You just don’t know it.”

Not the Rev. Johnny Hunter of North Carolina, another conference guest. Hunter, the national director of the Life Education and Resource Center, left the Democratic Party several years ago over its pro-choice stand but said he simply could not become a Republican.

“I just can’t do it,” he said. “There are some issues of social justice that really need to be addressed.”

Historically, the last time the Republican Party actively identified with African Americans was during Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. And winning over a pastor does not necessarily mean the flock will follow.

Most black people--63%--say pastors are the most important leaders in the African American community, according to the Barna Research Group Ltd., a Ventura company that tracks cultural trends and Christianity. Yet the African American vote is the only one in the nation that has no correlation between high church attendance and acceptance of the Republican Party, the research firm says.

Among California Republican legislators, the most enthusiastic envoys to black churches have been Leslie and Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside).

Their efforts began about two years ago. Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte (R-Rancho Cucamonga) hired consultant Tony Lowden, who had worked on recruiting ministers for the Democratic Party, to launch a similar fact-finding mission for Republicans. When Lowden returned, he told Brulte, Haynes and Leslie the time was ripe for them to step in.

Haynes and Leslie say they keep their black pastor events in Sacramento low-profile to avoid any hint of insincerity. Haynes goes so far as to say he is not recruiting blacks for the party, merely building relationships in minority communities and staying true to conservative problem-solving methods.

Haynes said he was surprised by the black churches’ industriousness. “Those pastors are doing more with the hundreds of dollars that they get than we’re doing with millions we dump into bureaucracies.”

Now, after their immersion in black neighborhoods, Haynes and Leslie are conversant in a litany of services of interest to many African Americans, from convict employment programs to mortgage lending opportunities.

None of this is enough to win the many ministers who continue to view the GOP as racially hostile.

“They’re the same people who didn’t want us to come to their schools and now they want to pray with us? I think for myself and I’m just not hearing that,” said the Rev. M. Andrew Robinson-Gaither of Faith United Methodist Church in South-Central.

Gaither went on pastors’ trips to Washington and Sacramento and says he is open to a conservative solutions. But, “I would not want Social Security privatized. I don’t think we should legislate abortion, and then their whole approach to the economy is that business can do no wrong. But business abuses us as much as the government does. As for welfare reform, what about the welfare we give to corporations?”

David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economics, an organization that researches public policy issues of concern to African Americans, said the GOP’s dilemma is how to woo black conservatives without alienating white ones .

Even where black conservatives agree with mainstream conservatives, they do so for different reasons, Bositis said.

Take school vouchers. Bositis’ research shows that the majority of African Americans want school vouchers, but do so out of “desperation,” he said. “Their children are going to schools that are broken.”

White conservatives, as often as not, would use vouchers to move their children away from other kinds of children--such as black ones, Bositis said. “And those are two entirely different things.”

Party officials recognize that an accommodation has to be reached, if only for practical reasons. In 2000, Gore won 71% of the big-city vote. An example was Michigan, where he narrowly won the state’s electoral votes even though Bush won most counties. The reason: Gore took heavily black Detroit, winning 94% of the African American vote.

The GOP does not need the majority of blacks to vote Republican, Bositis said, just a few more. Doubling its national share to 20% would dramatically change its fortunes.

Bositis recently sat down with party leaders, who sought his advice about winning greater black support.

“I believe they really want to do it, but I told them it was going to be a long process, hard to accomplish,” he said. “It’s not necessarily impossible, just extremely difficult.”