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When I say they’re wrong.
Ferraro’s recent comments suggesting that Barack Obama is “very lucky to be who he is” as an African-American presidential candidate simply obscure our national history when it comes to electing blacks to high office.
To imply that being black makes political life easier than being a woman is woefully misguided.
“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position,” Ferraro told the Daily Breeze newspaper in Torrance, Calif. “And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
A Gallup Poll conducted in December determined that 93 percent of respondents would vote for a well-qualified presidential nominee who happened to be black while slightly fewer, 86 percent, said they would support a well-qualified woman.
But it’s all wrong. Nuts, I say. You only have to look to Missouri and Kansas.
How many African-Americans have the two states elected to statewide office in their collective history? Zero, nada, zilch. Not a single one.
How many women have won high office in both states? A bunch. Claire McCaskill is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in Missouri (Jean Carnahan got there via appointment). But McCaskill, a former two-term state auditor, has company in the statewide ranks with Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, Treasurer Sarah Steelman and Auditor Susan Montee.
Kansas has a long tradition of electing women to statewide office. In fact, at one point in the 1990s, the state was the only one in the country to have a woman governor (Joan Finney), U.S. senator (Nancy Kassebaum) and U.S. representative (Jan Meyers of Overland Park).
But these days, there are no African-Americans, even on the Kansas horizon.
Look at the national picture. No fewer than 16 women, McCaskill included, now serve in the Senate. The number of African-American senators in the history of the country? You can count ’em on one hand: Brooke, Braun, Obama, Revels and Bruce.
Meantime, eight women are serving as governors in 2008, including Kansas’ Kathleen Sebelius. On Monday, David Paterson will become the first African-American governor of New York in the wake of Eliot Spitzer’s resignation, becoming the fourth black governor ever, anywhere.
Ferraro herself became the first woman on a national ticket in 1984, an honor that has so far eluded a black.
What’s the tougher political mountain to climb? Are you kidding?
“Ferraro is not a student of history or chooses not to be,” said Kansas City Councilwoman Sharon Sanders Brooks.
Ferraro is “way off base on that,” said Missouri State University political scientist George Connor. “There’s a clear prejudice that remains in American politics toward African-Americans.”
• • •
It was bound to happen: A reporter asked Paterson in a post-Spitzer news conference if he had ever been to a prostitute. The question reportedly evoked gasps from staffers.
“Only the lobbyists,” Paterson said.
The next sound: laughter.
• • •
Supertracker: Five of Kansas’ nine superdelegates remain uncommitted. So do eight of Missouri’s 16.
Don’t expect much movement before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.
• • •
Listen up, Leno, Letterman and Conan. University of Iowa prof Russell Peterson suggests in a new book that all the digs about John Edwards’ $400 haircut and Clinton’s near-tears episode do more damage than you think.
“The jokes play into the public perception … every candidate in every party is, has been and always will be the same: corrupt, inadequate or self-interested.”
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