The "Black Jesse Helms" Runs for Congress

Vernon Robinson, the Republican candidate for the 13th congressional district of North Carolina, is brutalizing GOP efforts to win more African American converts. He is embarrassing national Republicans who want to reach out to Black voters around the country by running a campaign that caters to the fringes of American conservative politics. Robinson may well be the most conservative person running for Congress this year and his bid to defeat incumbent Brad Miller is based on arguments more likely to inflame than inform. He trades in hostility to the poor and immigrants, which is particularly bizarre because Robinson is Black; indeed he caused a stir by stating: "Jesse Helms is back, this time he's Black." You may not know Robinson, but his blame-the-victim brand of politics is very familiar - he is the living embodiment of Jesse Helms and our political discourse is much worse as a result.

To be sure, it is not bizarre that he is a Black conservative running for office; that happens regularly. What is unusual is the fact that Robinson is running the kind of race-baiting, hate-filled campaign one would expect from a White racial conservative. His inflammatory ads are beyond the pale and spray bigotry over the airwaves like a machine gun. They play on all the popular bogeymen that resonate with voters these days: illegal immigration, gay marriage, and abortion as well as others we haven't heard much of recently, like making English the official national language. His positions aren't that unusual, either; many candidates have won races across the country on the strength of aggressive positions on these issues. It is the way in which he treats these issues in his ads tht suggest Robinson should not be taken seriously. If he were White, he would have been denounced long ago as a racist.

Robinson has also established himself as a clever mudslinger. He continues to insinuate that Miller, a childless man, is an ultra-liberal gay - a charge he hopes will resonate with conservatives in this district that includes parts of Greensboro and Raleigh. Robinson has called his opponent "Sugar Daddy Miller" who has given away tax dollars and has "sneaky aliens eating from his hand". His most inflammatory ad may be the one that features a Black woman dejectedly balling up a job application as the narrator says: "You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but they gave it to an illegal alien so they could pay him under the table." Sound familiar? Well, it's nearly identical to the racist ad Jesse Helms used against Harvey Gantt in their 1990 campaign. The Helms ad was denounced for its overt implication that affirmative action necessarily required Whites to lose their jobs or not get work for which they were qualified. Robinson is a Black man who mimics White racists. Delightful.

Even though Robinson is running in a reliably safe Democratic district, he should be watched because of his ability to court contributions from the fringes of American politics. He's from the Tom Tancredo-Ann Coulter-Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party and has parlayed his inflammatory positions into more than $3 million in campaign contributions over the last three years for two House campaigns (he lost a 2004 race). Imagine how much he could raise if he was seen as a possible winner.

Robinson is an unfortunate, albeit interesting, contrast to African American politicians around the country who are trying to reach out to White voters to win races. Barack Obama and Harold Ford, for example, are viewed as part of the vanguard of new Black elected officials who downplay race and appeal to hope to actively court White voters while maintaining Black support. Robinson, on the other hand, appears to repel Black votes while courting far-right White voters with anti-Black, anti-Hispanic rhetoric. Robinson is trying to pull America backward while other African Americans are pushing the country into a new, more enlightened era of political discourse.

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