Question: What do Branch Rickey, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Howard Dean have in common?
Answer: Each of them made a decision to break the color barrier by picking African Americans for key spots on their teams. Rickey, of course, signed Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers. Clinton appointed Ron Brown as the first African American to head the Commerce Department and Franklin Raines as the first black Office of Management and Budget Director (among others). Bush has followed in that tradition by naming African Americans as national-security adviser and twice as secretary of state -- Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Rice again, respectively.
And Dean?
Dean recently joined this notable list when he brought Cornell Belcher on as the first African American to serve as polling director for the Democratic National Committee (DNC).
Not sure hiring Belcher is as significant as recruiting Robinson, Brown, Raines, Powell, or Rice? Well, consider this: There are five indispensable people in any campaign organization -- the campaign manager, who vets all decisions; the finance director, who figures out how to pay for the enterprise; and the media adviser, the research director, and the pollster, who decide what the campaign will talk about, what its vulnerabilities are, and how to defend against them. Political director and field director are also key positions, but it is the “Indispensable Five” who typically gather to make most of the major decisions of any campaign organization. Inexplicably, despite the necessity of African American support for Democratic victories, almost none of these senior decision-makers are ever black.
Political observers are familiar with Donna Brazile, who served as Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign manager. Yet it is quite difficult to name another African American who has served as a campaign manager for a major Democratic candidate for president, governor or senator, other than Craig Kirby, who managed Peter Deutch's primary campaign for the Senate in Florida last year. Kirby is now also working with Dean at the DNC.
African American major fund-raisers are also rare. The few that come to mind are Tina Flournoy, who was finance director for Gore in 2000 and is now another Dean DNC adviser; David Mercer and Wayne Marshall, who were senior finance officials at the DNC in previous years; and Vera Baker, who was finance director for Barack Obama's Senate race.
It's even harder to find an African American owner, partner, or associate in a mainstream political advertising agency, though there are a handful of ad agencies with black principals that do ads targeted for African Americans candidates and committees.
Meanwhile, locating an African American research director is tougher than finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There are none.
As for pollsters, there are three with national bona fides -- Silas Lee, of Silas Lee & Associates; Ron Lester, of Lester & Associates; and Cornell Belcher, president of Brilliant Corners Research. Of the three, only Belcher has previously done mainstream polling for a major national party organization or campaign, serving on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. While other pollsters will do work for the DNC, Dean deserves credit for putting Belcher front and center.
As a fierce supporter of Donnie Fowler -- who campaigned for DNC chairman promising to end the reign of the “Aristocracy of Consultants,” include people of diverse backgrounds at the decision-making table, and give greater funding and assistance to the state parties -- I have been pleasantly surprised at the Dean chairmanship so far. Dean has shaken up the consultant pool, increased diversity, funded state parties, and is searching for messages to appeal to more voters. There are now African Americans and Hispanics throughout the DNC building, including Karen Finney, the party's first African American communications director.
Other Democrats should follow Dean's lead and begin an internal effort to do what we have been asking private corporations to do for years: diversify senior management. That means we should recruit, train, and hire more black campaign managers, fund-raisers, researchers, ad-makers, and pollsters. It also means African American campaign staffers have to continue to work at gaining the skills to perform the jobs of the “Indispensable Five.” A team with diverse backgrounds and ideas will only help our party reconnect with the American people.
Dean and Belcher are making an effort at reconnecting the party with the voters by launching a project to find the issues and messages that resonate with Bush voters. After losing the presidency (twice?) and six consecutive congressional elections, this is the most important thing for Democrats to figure out. Democrats want to protect the nation from terrorists. We want to help working people, their families, and businesses compete (and win) in the global economy. And we want to help parents who are raising children in an over-sexualized and hyper-violent culture. We must find a message that will convince voters that we can be trusted to do these things. Hopefully, the diverse team that Dean is assembling at the DNC will have better luck finding that message than Democrats have had in the recent past.
Jamal Simmons was traveling press secretary for the 2003-2004 presidential campaigns of General Wesley Clark and Senator Bob Graham.
