Outreach targets blacks in Texas GOP

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Outreach targets blacks in Texas GOP

Legislative Black Caucus welcomes 2 Republicans

By R.G. RATCLIFFE

AUSTIN BUREAU

Dec. 24, 2010, 5:40PM

AUSTIN — When Lubbock's Ron Givens entered the Texas House in 1985 as the first black Republican to serve there since R.J. Moore of Houston almost 100 years earlier, the reception he received was less than enthusiastic.

The Legislative Black Caucus, founded by liberal Democrats, did not want him as a member. Nor did the Republican caucus, which at the time had only about 40 members, all white.

"No one wanted me to succeed because they didn't want what I represented," Givens recalled recently. "Everyone was trying to exterminate me."

Givens served two terms before returning to Lubbock and his real estate business. In the next 22 years, no other black Republican was elected to the Legislature.

That changed last month. Come January, newly elected black Republicans Stefani Carter, of Dallas, and James White, of Hillister near Lufkin, will be among 101 party members in the Texas House. Hispanic Republicans also gained five seats where they had had none.

This time around, Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, was quick to ask the new members to join.

"We are not the Democratic caucus. We are not the Republican caucus. We are the Legislative Black Caucus," Turner said.

Black voters in Texas typically cast 90 percent or more of their votes for Democrats, and in 2008 more than 98 percent of the black vote went to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

Turner said the caucus wanted to make certain it was open to changing views.

"The African-American community is very diverse. It's not monolithic," he said.

White and Carter ran on Republican platforms of cutting government spending and reducing taxes.

Both have Democratic backgrounds. White as a young man canvassed Houston neighborhoods for liberal Democrat Mickey Leland. Carter was an intern in the Clinton White House.

White said he became a Republican in the 1980s because he saw the party more aligned with his views on social issues. Carter said she first voted Republican in 2004 because she saw the GOP as the party of personal responsibility while also believing former President George W. Bush was trying to create school choice to help inner-city youths.

"Winning this seat was about the content of my ideas, not the color of my skin," said Carter, 33, a former prosecutor.

Vows independent voice

White, who was a high school government teacher in Houston, said he is not necessarily going to march in lock-step with Republicans in Austin.

"I'm going to Austin to work with people for my district," White said. "I'm not interested in going there and putting on a uniform and talking about your team or my team."

White said he campaigned against big government spending and an intrusive national government. He also noted that state government spending in Texas has grown dramatically over the past decade, "and the Republicans have been in charge."

At the same time, White has pledged himself to state Rep. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, in his challenge to House Speaker Joe Straus. White said he defeated state Rep. Jim McReynolds, D-Lufkin, who made an issue in his campaign of being close to Straus. White said he believes his voters would have re-elected McReynolds if that was what they wanted.

"It will be the first vote I make, and I just believe I've got to vote my district," White said.

Ready to succeed

White, 46, runs a small cattle operation in Tyler County as he works on finishing a doctoral dissertation in political science for Richard Murray at the University of Houston.

Murray said White has been an impressive student and said his dissertation is focused on the national Republican Party's efforts to reach black voters in 2006 in races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

"That's the most intensive effort Republicans had made since they punted in 1964," Murray said, referring to Barry Goldwater's Southern Strategy to win over white voters angry about desegregation.

Murray said Republicans gave up on the black vote in 2008 because then-Sen. Obama was on the presidential ticket. Murray said White and Carter won because Republicans nationalized this election and there was a tremendous straight-ticket vote for the GOP.

"These guys won with white voter support," Murray said. "Can they survive in a non-tidal wave election year?"

Givens said he was recruited to run by a young political consultant named Lee Atwater, who later became famous as the 1988 presidential campaign strategist for George H.W. Bush. Givens said he hopes the new black Republicans have an easier time than he did.

"It was a different time," Givens said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7353502.html