Splinters
from the 2020 Democratic Presidential Campaign Trail
After
stating that he would be the “…most pro-public
education President ever,” 2020 presidential candidate, Sen.
Cory Booker (D-NJ), bent the knee for his corporate Cartel of school
choice backers by issuing a resolution to celebrate National Charter
Schools week, May 12-18. He had taken too much of their money to
remain silent on a week they established to honor their
accomplishments. Booker was joined by his fellow Democratic
contender, Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO), also in the Cartel’s
pocket, the only two of the 24 Democratic presidential aspirants to
do so.
Beto
O’Rourke is trying to resuscitate his flagging 2020
presidential campaign, and his wife, Amy, persists in promoting
corporate charter schools in the El Paso, Texas region while she
stumps with him before public school teacher groups in Iowa and
elsewhere who oppose charter schools.
Sen.
Kamala Harris (D-CA) continues to upstage her African American male
opponents, Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam (D) and Sen. Cory
Booker (D-NJ), in the fight for the black vote in the February 29,
2020 South Carolina Democratic presidential primary.
The
Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), led by Trump’s
two recent appointees, Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, has given
Republicans a leg up in 2020 by placing a decision on electoral
redistricting in Ohio and Michigan on hold until after the 2020
elections.
Republicans
are pulling out all stops in their efforts to reelect President
Trump, retain control of the U.S. Senate, and to regain control of
the U.S. House of Representatives. And like their rogue President,
Donald J. Trump, they are attempting to achieve these outcomes (and
are doing so) by unethical and illegal means. Democrats, in
contrast, seem to be oblivious to the venality of Republicans in
maintaining their power. And they are being outflanked on numerous
fronts.
A
2018 Congressional election in North Carolina revealed that black
absentee ballots, in a heavily black rural county, were
misappropriated by a white field consultant for a Republican
candidate who won the race by less than a 1,500 vote margin. After
an investigation by the North Carolina State Elections Board, the
race was nullified, and a new election is being held.
Attacks
on minority voter registration and actual theft of votes are focal
points of Republicans. Brian Kemp, while serving as Georgia’s
Secretary of State and running for governor in 2018, essentially
stole the election from his African American opponent, Stacey Abrams
by rejecting tens of thousands of black voters’ registration
forms, and intimidating black voters at polling stations.
Tennessee’s
Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a bill on May 2nd that
imposes penalties of $2,000 for each county for 100 deficient forms
(and up to $10,000 per county where the number exceeds 500) when a
voter registration association with paid workers submits them. This
law was hastily put together and passed after the state’s top
election official, a former Republican lawmaker, said the crush of
applications after the Tennessee Black Voter Project turned in 90,000
voter registration applications and the errors they contained created
a dangerous situation.
The
emphasis of the bill is on the Memphis, Nashville, and Chattanooga
and other Tennessee communities with high black population
concentrations. The objective is to depress black voter turnout in
these areas which would affect local, statewide, and presidential
elections. As the demographics of southern states increasingly trend
minority and Democratic, these actions will bear fruit for a
Republican Party that is becoming mostly white with a decreasing
population.
In
Texas, Acting Secretary of State, David Whitley, led a botched voter
purge of almost 100,000 naturalized U.S. citizens (nearly all of whom
were Hispanic) in a quest to ensure the integrity of elections. He
alleged that of these individuals, 58,000 had voted illegally in at
least one Texas election, and he sent out letters threatening to
disenfranchise them unless they proved their citizenship within 30
days. After a cursory review of already available documents, and
numerous lawsuits, a federal judge blocked the purge, stating that
Whitley’s “ham-handed” and “threatening”
voter purge endeavor “exemplifies the power of government to
strike fear and anxiety and to intimidate the least powerful among
us.” Whitley resigned after the judge’s ruling.
But
the slickest and most effective approaches are the utilization of
black and other minority local and state political and grassroots
leaders who are able to entice a slice of black voters to cast
ballots for Republicans or to not vote. The corporate Cartel of
school choice advocates is distributing significant money to local
African American leaders via grants for their voucher and charter
schools and nonprofits and to black politicians for their elections.
For
example, in North Carolina, the Cartel has carved out a third of the
legislature’s Black Caucus to carry its water on school choice
and other private-sector issues. They have also allied with black
school choice leaders from the national black school choice network.
In 2014, Dr. Howard Fuller, the Cartel’s foremost African
American school choice promoter, came to North Carolina to appear
with and campaign for school choice with the Republican U.S. Senate
candidate, Thom Tillis, under the guise of a book tour for his
autobiography, No
Struggle, No Progress: a Warrior's Life from Black Power to Education
Reform
(2014). He helped Tillis narrowly defeat a Democratic incumbent,
Sen. Kay Hagan, who ran with the 2008 Democratic presidential
candidate, Barack Obama.
Milwaukee
has long been a hub for Cartel-funded African American school choice
advocates whom it has deployed, along with Fuller, all over the
country during election cycles since the 1990s. Included in this
group are the late Annette Polly Williams (D), a former Wisconsin
State Representative; former Milwaukee County Supervisor and State
Representative Beth Coggs-Jones (D); Mikel Holt, Associate Publisher
of the Milwaukee Community Journal, Wisconsin’s largest
black newspaper; State Senator Lena Taylor (D), who supported
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, when she headed the American
Federation of Children; and current State Representative Jason Fields
(D).
They
have been effective in helping the Cartel win numerous political
races for white Republican candidates and for black and white
Democrats who carry the Cartel agenda. With their fellow African
American and other Cartel minority cohorts, they have become faces of
color on right-wing Republican plans and also help to undermine
candidates of color as they did in the 2018 Georgia and Florida
gubernatorial elections. The Koch Bros. and the Cartel are also
behind State Sen. Lena Taylor floating a trial balloon for a 2020 run
for Mayor of Milwaukee. She has supported previous legislation on
their behalf, and they stand ready to back her mayoral campaign
should she run.
The
hope is to cause enough political consternation in the African
American community so as to use the April 2020 mayoral race to
disrupt black politics heading to the November 2020 presidential
election, enough to enable Trump to squeeze out another Wisconsin
victory. Trump and the Republicans use of other black elected
officials, clergy, and community leaders to transform American
politics will be examined in further detail in the coming weeks.
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