Kanawha County House of Delegates member Meshea Poore announced this week that she’s running for the Democratic nomination to Congress in the 2nd district.
It will be an uphill fight for Poore.
The other Democrat in the race is Charleston attorney and lobbyist Nick Casey. As the former state Democratic Party chairman, Casey is well connected. Additionally, he has some personal wealth, as well as the ability to raise money. Casey already has $420,000 in campaign funds, with $300,000 coming from his own checkbook.
Poore, who is also an attorney, happens to be black.
We would like to believe politics have reached a post-racial plateau, but that would be naïve and inaccurate. The election and re-election of Barack Obama was a critical milestone, but ethnicity remains a factor. Consider, for example, the GOP’s interest in Marco Rubio as a possible Presidential candidate as a way to bridge the gap with Hispanic voters.
At least a portion of the antipathy toward Obama in West Virginia can be quantified as racially motivated. After Hillary Clinton’s overwhelming victory over Obama in the 2008 Democratic Primary here, the New York Times reported, “The number of white Democratic voters who said that race influenced their choice on Tuesday was among the highest recorded in voter surveys in the Clinton-Obama nomination fight. Two in 10 white West Virginia voters said that race was an important factor in their vote.”
It’s hard to imagine much had changed four years later when a jailed felon got more votes than Obama in the Democratic Primary.
Former West Virginia Democratic Party chairman George Carenbauer answers bluntly when asked if race remains a factor in West Virginia politics.
“Yes,” he says without hesitation, but he does add a qualifier. “Many people do not realize they have certain latent tendencies (about race), not only in West Virginia, but also the country. It will be a long time before we get over that.”
West Virginia is overwhelmingly white.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 94 percent of the state’s population is white and only 3.5 percent is black. Nationally, it’s 13.1 percent. The 2nd Congressional district has three pockets of black voters: Kanawha (7.5%), Berkeley (7.4%) and Jefferson (6.8%).
In eleven of the 18 counties in the district, which stretches from the Ohio River across central West Virginia to the eastern panhandle, the black population is only one percent or less. There are some communities in West Virginia where voters might not even know any black people.
David Fryson, the Chief Diversity Officer at West Virginia University, also believes that race still factors into voting decisions here, and will impact Poore’s chances.
“Yes, that’s just a reality,” he told me, but he added that “in some quarters, she may pick up (liberal) white votes because she is black. But historically I haven’t seen that very much in West Virginia.”
As for Poore, she brushed aside the race question when I asked her on Talkline this week.
“I’m really not focused on race,” she said. “I don’t believe race is going to play a factor because it hasn’t played a factor (in her previous elections in the 37th delegate district).”
That’s a reasoned and careful answer that artfully avoids the distraction that comes with the awkward discussion of race in politics. However, the evidence suggests that for at least some voters in the 2014 Democratic Primary, the 2nd District contest won’t just be about the issues.