Campaign '04: Beyond The Pulpit

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The Buffalo Soldiers are invading the diners and barbershops of South Carolina. The political soldiers, named after a 19th century black Army regiment, once stormed black neighborhoods to get out the vote for Bill Clinton. This year they are canvassing for Wesley Clark, but the battle isn't so simple this time. Last Thursday, as Buffalo Soldiers in black cavalry hats and boots gathered around Rhonda Court, 40, an apartment-complex manager eating lunch at LJ's Soul Food Cafe in Charleston, she wasn't satisfied with the cowboy pitch. "What's Clark all about on Medicaid and getting lower-income families better access to health coverage?" she wanted to know.

Bill Clinton is gone, and so is Jesse Jackson. This time there is no easy or natural choice for black voters. Next week will be the candidates' first real test among this constituency in the "Southern gateway" primary in South Carolina, in which African Americans will probably make up as much as 50% of voting Democrats. This year the candidates are finding they must do more if they are going to capture the imagination and the votes of the demographic that is critical not only to a victory in the primaries but also to giving a Democrat a chance against George Bush. "Just saying the name Martin Luther King a couple of times is not enough," says Joy-Ann Lomena Reid, who writes on black issues for the Miami Herald.

For decades, African-American voters have rallied behind one clear Democratic contender in the primary season: Jackson, then Clinton and then Al Gore. This time, though, the vote looks as if it may be scattered across the pack. "There is no messiah among them," says the Rev. Joseph Darby, pastor of the Morris Brown A.M.E. Church in Charleston and one of the city's most prominent black leaders. But is the difficulty this time caused by the message or the messenger? Or by the contemporary political landscape, where the black demographic is no longer so monolithic, and where leaders do not dutifully line up behind one candidate, and where the black church is no longer a guaranteed kingmaker?

Howard Dean, for example, has won the backing of more black congressional caucus members than any other candidate, but each candidate has his own bragging roster. Clark has the support of New York Congressman Charles Rangel and Andrew Young, and John Kerry can claim the leader of South Carolina's legislative black caucus as well as Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, who had overwhelming support from African-American voters in his 1998 re-election. All of the candidates are in the hunt for the blessing of South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, who had originally endorsed Dick Gephardt. It's not clear whether the divided endorsements mean that black politicians are getting more savvy, as many black leaders claim, or that they are diluting their strength by not working as a bloc.