That historically all-white club known as the US Senate is likely to lose what little diversity it has after November’s elections.
Two white men will be competing for US President Barack Obama’s former seat in Illinois, now held by Roland Burris, the Senate’s lone black American. Appointed by the scandal-tainted former governor, Burris decided against seeking a full term.
Obama’s former seat is now a prime takeover target for Republicans. The attention on it has intensified since the Republicans upset win in Massachusetts last month claimed the late Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat and ended the Democrats’ supermajority, imperiling Obama’s sweeping health care reform plans.
BLACK AMERICANS
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.
Black Americans comprise 12.2 percent of the US population, but you wouldn’t know it in the 100-member Senate. Come next year, the total number could add up to zero.
“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.
Bositis noted that black Americans don’t make up the majority population in any state and in states where they have large populations, as in the South, there are racial divisions that make getting elected difficult.
HISPANICS
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 Governor Charlie Crist for the Republican Senate nomination and the chance to succeed Republican Senator Mel Martinez, who left before his term ended.
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who was elected in 2006, is the Senate’s only Hispanic member and is one of only six Hispanics elected since the 1920s.
Representative Kendrick Meek, one of 41 black Americans in the House of Representatives, is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in Florida, but polls show him trailing both Rubio and Crist.
In North Carolina, two black Democrats are seeking to challenge Republican Senator Richard Burr.
MONEY
Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University political science and law professor, said party leaders needed 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 Representative Mark Kirk won the Republican nomination and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias walked away with the Democratic nod. Both are white.
Illinois has a history of sending black senators to Washington, with three of America’s four black senators in modern times coming from the state.
The first black senator to be elected by a popular vote was Edward 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. 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.
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