Dylan Glenn: Young, G.O.P. and Black

In civil rights lore, Albany doesn't get talked about much. That's because the small Georgia city, four hours south of Atlanta, is remembered as the place that turned back Martin Luther King Jr., sending the crusader home empty-handed. Albany sits in the heart of peanut country amid a dusty interweave of farm towns and red clay countryside. It's a world of tradition and habit; both dictate that this district belong to the Democrats. All the same, Albany is headquarters of Dylan Glenn's run for Congress, and if the 28-year-old wins, his election as the district's first Republican will be least among the reasons to cross-tab him in the history books. In a party defined for so long by its whiteness, Glenn is black. While most black Republicans complain of being ignored by the party, he has drawn money from such potentates as James Baker and Colin Powell. And in this majority-white district, the Democrat he has to beat, Sanford Bishop, is another black man.

A win by Glenn would be like a centennial bookend: the last Southern black Republican in Congress was North Carolinian George White, who left office in 1901. In the next 100 years, four other black Republicans would go to Congress. But for the most part the G.O.P., which once commanded black support as the party of Lincoln, earned the opposite image as the party on the wrong side of civil rights. With this precedent, it is startling that Glenn stands as a favored G.O.P. son. Two months before the primary, he has raised $360,000, most of it in fund raisers thrown from Los Angeles to New York City. His financial disclosure reports read like a Who's Who of the party, with three former Republican National Committee chairmen, a Rockefeller and pundit Mary Matalin contributing. He has a primary challenger, a white businessman who quotes "Stonewall" Jackson and is married to a former county peanut queen, which should mean that party officials must remain neutral. But Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran is ignoring protocol, having stumped for Glenn last December and narrated his campaign video.

Such backing is partly the result of Glenn's decades of networking. Even his most intimate friendships seem to have served a purpose. "My wife's cousin's son is Dylan's best friend," Cochran explains when asked how Glenn got his first job in Cochran's office. Pictures of George Bush, Newt Gingrich and other G.O.P. stalwarts stare down from the wall of Glenn's headquarters. But the support is not just the wages of bonhomie. Republicans know that as America becomes more ethnically diverse, they must attract more minority voters to retain the majority. "This is not about being the party of the moment but the party that looks ahead," says an aide to the Speaker, who made Glenn a delegate to a June White House Social Security summit.

Glenn was bred to be a Republican and straddle racial lines. The youngest son of a retired grade school principal and counselor, he grew up in Columbus, Ga., with parents who stood out for their affiliation with the G.O.P. "My father believed in individual responsibility and less government," says Glenn. He spent his last three years of high school at Episcopal, a D.C.-area boarding school, before heading off to Davidson College, a favorite of Southern gentry. That was followed by stints as a legislative aide to Cochran, a policy assistant in the Bush White House and convention adviser to the R.N.C.