GOP gov candidates go after black voters

Chicago Sun-Times

October 26, 2009

 

BY LAURA WASHINGTON

Republicans are landing in the most unlikely places. On the surface, Illinois’ 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary is shaping up as business as usual. The candidates are slinging brickbats at each other over taxes, competence and corruption. The he-said, he-said debate over how to fix Illinois’ broken budget, notorious political ethics and high taxes are the same tired running-in-place arguments we have heard for decades.

Two unusual suspects have stepped off the treadmill and caught my eye. Republican candidates Dan Proft and state Sen. Bill Brady are Going Where No Republicans Have Ever Gone Before (OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but still a good sign).

Proft, a communications operative and radio commentator, and Brady have landed in places such as Roseland and Chatham and are adopting causes like finding jobs for inner-city workers and boosting teacher quality in the Chicago Public Schools.

It’s not a moment too soon.

Proft is a hyper-conservative, hyper-garrulous bomb thrower who revels in calling out his fellow Republicans. He has been a top adviser to the wacky, right-wing Alan Keyes, Illinois’ 2004 Republican Senate nominee, and a well-paid flack for the squeaky-clean Town of Cicero.

Proft recently unveiled a statewide school voucher plan at two African-American churches: Triedstone Full Gospel Baptist Church in Roseland and Full Gospel Christian Assemblies Church in East Hazel Crest.

Brady, a home builder from Downstate Bloomington, gives Illinois’ Republican establishment the willies, according to Russ Stewart, a political writer for the Chicago Daily Observer Web site. Republican pols are “utterly paranoid about Brady. They think he is too conservative to win,” Stewart writes.

On Tuesday, Brady trekked to the proposed Wal-Mart site at 83rd and Stewart on Chicago’s South Side to launch his Illinois “jobs tour.” He’s pushing legislation that would end run the Chicago City Council’s opposition to a megastore that could bring 400 new jobs to Chatham. He’s also calling for tax credits for businesses that add jobs, as well as cutting other taxes and fees that he says stymie job growth.

Those are some traditional Republican moves in some untraditional places.

Last week at a Republican candidates forum, Proft argued that his party should “build nontraditional coalitions around issues of common interest. When I am out selling my school choice plan, I am doing it in low-income communities which are disproportionately minority and disproportionately deprived of the opportunity to access schools that will set their children on the path to be successful, independent adults.”

Brady is “infuriated” by the labor union-inspired resistance to opening a Wal-Mart near one of the city’s notorious “food deserts.” “It boggles my mind,” he told me, that the city is depriving South Siders from “an opportunity to buy good healthy produce at a reasonable price.”

On Feb. 2, as many as seven candidates will be scrambling for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. I asked Brady: Why bother pitching to folks who vote lockstep with the Democrats?

Black and Latino voters, he said, are “working, churchgoing individuals that share my Republican values: school choice, family and marriage. Part of my agenda is to reach out. Somebody has to push on this issue.”

Pro-union Democrats, professional protesters and my cynical colleagues will all sneer that Brady and Proft are merely hustling for cheap photo-ops and pandering to voters they have long ignored.

Illinois’ black unemployment rate is in the double digits. The Chicago Public Schools are in crisis. If these strange bedfellows can get somewhere with this tactic, maybe it will catch on.