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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS