Disposable Allies: Blacks Used By Republicans

Let's take a quick jaunt into recent political history: the 2004 U.S. Senate election that ultimately got Barack Obama elected as junior U.S. Senator from Illinois. Remember any of that hoopla? It provides some excellent insight into how Republicans view black people as political allies.

It's important to view this in some historical context of race in politics. Obama was (and remains) the only person of African ethnic descent to be elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction. The Republican Party had recently held a nominating convention that held a seeming parade of every ounce of melanin they could find in their ranks. Colin Powell gave a keynote speech that was the beginning of a very short political career, before George Bush sent him into the UN to sell the Iraq war, armed with the diplomatic equivalent of blanks. Powell has been a political hermit since his resignation as Secretary of State, emerging only once to shoot down a Republican plan to torture suspects on the battlefield.

The end of the story is that Democrat Barack Obama was elected, Republican Alan Keyes moved back to Maryland, and Republican Jack Ryan no longer teaches high school. Here's the rest:

At the beginning of the race to replace retiring GOP Senator Peter Fitzgerald, Barack Obama was facing a serious challenge from one Jack Ryan. Jack Ryan was a very good-looking guy with the backing of the state Republican Party, who was also quite wealthy from his accomplished career as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs. He was divorced from Jeri Lynn (Zimmerman) Ryan, better known as Seven of Nine from the Star Trek Voyager series.

Most interesting in relation to Republicans' treatment of blacks, Ryan quit his job as an investment banker shortly before running for Senate, and went to work for Hales Franciscan High School, which describes itself this way: "Today, the school continues to be the only historically African-American, all-male, Catholic college preparatory high school in the State of Illinois and one of three such institutions in the nation." Ryan, who is Catholic (and white) denied that he had taken the job as part of his plan to run for higher office, and insisted that he would remain as a teacher at the school if he lost the Senate race. He did, however, use a photograph in his campaign literature that showed him surrounded by black teenage students at the school.

As Wikipedia elegantly explains, Ryan's Senatorial campaign was crushed like a bug, due to Ryan's dishonesty about his divorce:

Ryan married actress Jeri Ryan in 1991; together they have a son, Alex Ryan. They divorced in 1999 in California, and the records of the divorce were sealed at their mutual request. Five years later, when Ryan's Senate campaign began, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and WLS-TV, the local ABC affiliate, sought to have the records released. Both Ryan and his wife agreed to make their divorce records public; but not the custody records, claiming that they could be harmful to their son if released.

On June 22, 2004, the California judge in the case agreed to release the custody files. The decision generated much controversy because it went against both parents' direct request and because it generally reversed the earlier decision to seal the papers in the best interest of the child.

Now public, the court filings by Jeri Ryan revealed that she claimed that her husband had taken her to sex clubs in New Orleans, New York City, and Paris, where he had asked her to perform sexual activities with him in front of other attendees of the clubs. Jeri Ryan described one as "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling." In opposing court papers, Ryan denied the allegations, calling them "ridiculous", and accusing her of trying to libel him with the accusations, which he labeled "smut," and trying to sabotage a potential political career. After the papers became public, he continued to deny the allegations and vowed to stay in the race. In defense of Ryan, some supporters pointed out that the judge in the custody case ruled in his favor, suggesting the accusations were not viewed as credible by the court. Jeri Ryan refused to comment.

Before the Republican primary election, state party chairwoman Judy Baar Topinka had asked Ryan if there was anything embarrassing in the files; he replied that there was not. Moderate Republican Representative Ray LaHood called on Ryan to drop out of the race. By June 25, Dennis Hastert, another prominent Illinois Republican (and the House Speaker) had "made some calls", according to anonymous sources reported in the Daily Southtown, and the consensus was for Ryan to step aside. The Southtown newspaper also reported that Ryan was expected to step aside.

Some commentators pointed out that the information contained in the files involved private matters between a husband and wife and should not have been grounds for the destruction of Ryan's campaign. However, one of the factors — aside from the sex club allegations — was the belief that Ryan had misled the Republican leadership, thereby preventing the party from taking any measures that might have avoided the damage. As his support continued to decline, Ryan withdrew from the race on June 25, 2004.

As Ryan's replacement, the Illinois Republican Party installed Alan Keyes, a perennial presidential candidate who is best known for being black and Republican. The only problem was that Keyes lived in Maryland, not Illinois. With the clock ticking for establishing residency, Keyes quickly moved to Calumet City (More info here.) He, like Ryan, insisted that his efforts were not a transitory effort to play politics: Keyes had moved to Calumet City because he wanted to live there permanently.

The rest is history, and completely predictable, if you start with the premise that Republicans use blacks as pawns without intending to fulfill any political commitments made to blacks: Keyes left Illinois as soon as he lost the election. I also confirmed by checking the school's website, and with a quick phone call, that Jack Ryan quit working for Hales Franciscan. He's not listed even in their 2004 roster of teachers.

I wish this were an isolated incident, but it's not. Republicans have a long way to go before they can make credible commitments to Americans whose ethnic heritage includes anything other than all-white. It's incredible that Democrats are able to lose to such blatantly hypocritical rubes. Still, these Republican rubes have a plan, and some party discipline. Even if Democrats take a significant number of seats on November 7, we'll risk losing it all again to our own lack of organization. But that's another story for another time.