Dole Makes Appeal To Black Voters Candidate Apologizes For Snubbing Naacp, But Not For Opposing Affirmative Action

Apologizing for the “missed opportunity” when he snubbed the NAACP, Bob Dole appealed directly to black voters Friday by saying the Republican Party will never be whole until it earns the broad support of African-Americans.

Facing an audience that was skeptical at best, Dole was direct and occasionally humorous as he defended his stand against affirmative action, welfare and his record on civil rights.

Urging more black support for the GOP, Dole made unusually earnest and personal arguments to the annual convention of the National Black Journalists Association, but he drew the most applause when he claimed that Democrats are accustomed to taking the black vote for granted.

“Democrat leaders simply assume ownership of the African-American vote,” Dole said. “But what have they done lately to earn it?”

Admitting that “I see these matters through the lens of a certain experience,” the 73-year-old Kansan walked nimbly across issues both old and new, taking credit for a voting record that included support of major civil rights bills but veered more conservative in recent years as he prepared his run for the presidency.

He even recalled the World War II experience of Sen. Daniel Inouye, who was given a transfusion marked with the words “black blood.” Dole quoted Inouye saying “I don’t care who that blood came from” and said he felt the same with his blood transfusions.

The most topical issue, however, was the Dole campaign’s June decision to decline the NAACP’s invitation to speak at its convention.

“We have missed opportunities as a party from time to time and I missed one not knowing about the NAACP, and I am sorry for that,” Dole told the group.

Aides at the time and earlier Friday contended it was a scheduling conflict that kept Dole from speaking to the nation’s largest black organization. Dole later contended that the invitation was an attempt to set him up for embarrassment.

But on Friday, most of that defensiveness was gone, and he tried to meld his policies with his own experiences.

Some sections of his speech received little but silence, but the more than 2,000 journalists responded when Dole noted that he too “became a member of a minority by being disabled,” and that he understood hardship.

Speaking of how violent crime is destroying the inner cities, Dole used the Justice Department estimate that “one out of every 21 black men can expect to be murdered, a death rate double that of U.S. soldiers in World War II.”

Audience reaction ranged from tepid to respectful to a few dozen enthusiastic supporters as the Republican nominee repudiated his own party platform’s call for a constitutional amendment denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

Keeping to his campaign messages, Dole proposed a four-year, $12 billion demonstration program to show how a school voucher system could work. He said the federal government and 15 state governments would finance a $1,000 annual scholarship for elementary school children and $1,500 for high school students to attend the school of their choice.

But the most tempestuous topic was about affirmative action.

“Although I have supported race-based preferences in the past, over time I realized - as have many others - that preferences, created with the best intentions, were dividing Americans, not bringing us together.

During a brief question and answer period, Kemp defended his reversal on affirmative action after becoming Dole’s running mate.

Dole’s mea culpa, in the longest speech since his convention acceptance talk, was an attempt to generate more than the 8 percent of black support that George Bush received in 1992.

One of his black advisers, Thaddeus Garrett, chairman of the board of Howard University in Washington, D.C., said Republicans would do well to receive 15 percent to 20 percent of the black vote.

Anticipating the journalists’ reaction, Garrett said, “This is not an applause audience, this is a ‘where I stand’ audience.”

Dole and Kemp recalled the anti-slavery beginnings, the “radical roots,” of their party.

“And that is why, with candor and chagrin, we will be first to recognize that the seed planted so carefully by Lincoln did not always grow straight,” Kemp said, claiming the he and Dole want to “forge a new civil rights agenda with expanded ownership and empowerment …”

“I am real impressed. I think it took a lot of courage for him to come here,” said Eileen Jones, an on-air reporter for WSFA in Montgomery, Ala. “I think he was sincere but my problem is he was nominated and has the backing of a lot of right-wingers and conservatives.”

Jones also commented that despite his appeal to understand the era he grew up in in Kansas, “his voting record speaks a lot louder than growing up in Russell.”

Glenn Rice, a police and courts reporter for the Kansas City Star, echoed that: “He recognizes it (declining the NAACP invitation) was a poor decision on his part … but actions do speak louder than words.”