(EDITOR’S NOTE: Blacks and Hispanics running for United States President? The highly visible presence of Mexican-American Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico,, in the Democratic Party’s primary, and primary winner Barack Obama , son of a Kenyan businessman, have many young voters believing the two men are breaking new political ground. Not true. In a Hispanic Link column he authored a quarter century ago, Washington consultant Julio Barreto Jr. provides some context).
Presidential election year – 1984: First, the spirited nominating conventions in San Francisco and Dallas. Then, the grinding months of campaigning and debate. Finally, on Nov. 6, the nation’s electorate goes to the polls to choose.
Will it be:
- The Democratic Party standard-bearer: A tough, charismatic liberal who promises compassionate presidency, an embracing democracy – access and opportunity for all. By humanizing our national agenda, he’ll open up education and jobs for all those willing to pursue them. Spread the abundance.
- The Republican Party standard-bearer: Tough and congenial, too, with the infectious smile of a winner. Social programs aren’t the panacea, he cautions. He warns of the spread of communism in our hemisphere and of the dangers of a high federal deficit. His blueprint for the nation stresses the work ethic. Let’s roll up our sleeves, America.
Pull the lever. Stamp your ballot. Your choices are:
- Jesse Jackson.
- Ben Fernández.
That’s the choice. A Black or a Hispanic.
Absurd? Impossible? Here we are, in July 1983, 16 months from ’84 election day, and Jesse Jackson is getting so much press as the “Black candidate” that it has to be turning the other Democratic candidates green with envy. And as of this moment, Ben Fernández, trying desperately to gain media attention talking about issues rather than his Mexican heritage, is the only declared candidate for the Republican nomination. He announced his candidacy at the National Press Club in Washington last week.
Both have qualifications and commitment arguably equal to those of the others who have lived, or presently reside, in the White House.
Jackson’s leadership talents are reasonably well known. Fernández’s aren’t. A self-made millionaire, he founded the National Economic Development Association (serving without compensation as its chairman and president for 15 months), is regarded as the father of an Hispanic financial industry which today boasts assets of $5.3 billion, served on Reagan’s transition team, held several posts with the Republican Party, was Special Ambassador to Paraguay, and even worked for General Electric early in his career.
In his “poor man’s campaign” for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, he made the ballot in 18 states.
If the right Black or Hispanic presidential candidate came along, is it possible that U.S. voters could — in 1984 – look beyond their race or ethnicity and support one?
In the California gubernatorial race last November, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, a Black who spent his whole political life appealing to the white majority, found out when California’s voters rejected him in the privacy of their polling booths after assuring him for months through opinion polls that he was their “choice.”
More recently, there was Federico Peña’s stunning victory in the Denver mayoral race.
With his “Kennedy charisma,” Peña waged a brilliant campaign which made him a surprise winner in Denver’s primary and showed him leading a dull, twice-defeated opponent by more than 15 percent days before the runoff. Peña won by a whisker. A switch of just 2,200 votes out of 154,000 would have reversed the result.
The Denver Post surveyed 120 voters as they walked from key polling places. Here are some comments reporters collected from those who chose Irish-American Dale Tooley over Mexican-American Federico Peña:
- “I am afraid of partisanship with Peña”
- ”The Spanish people are involved in crime.”
- ”I don’t want a bunch of Mexicans running city government.”’
- ”The Mexicans and Blacks will take over and the whites will be the minority.
- ”I think I voice the opinion of a great number of whites. We’re being pushed into the background.”
An Anglo couple in their 60s was quoted: “We voted for Tooley because we’re bigots. Peña’s Hispanic and it’s scary to think about people who’ve never voted before, and they’re going to vote now.”
This, following a clean campaign in a “good” city.
The people, the media and the political establishment all are trying to cope with America’s newest Black and Brown revolution getting involved in the traditional political process. The way Jackson’s candidacy might rock relationships between White liberals and Blacks has Hamilton Jordan lecturing in Newsweek’s “My Turn” this month: “If Jesse Jackson enters the race, he must bear responsibility for the consequences of his running.”
That’s an outrageous, but not atypical, reaction.
That Blacks and Hispanics are believing that this nation might actually elect one of them as president has got to be the best news U.S. Americans have heard in a long time. It says that Blacks and Browns still believe the system can be fair to everyone, in spite of much evidence over the years to the contrary. It’s a refreshing, hopeful sign that our political apparatus can work for us all.
(Julio Barreto Jr. is a contributing columnist with Hispanic Link New Service.) ©2008
Sidebar Jesse Jackson ran for president in the Democratic Party’s primaries of 1980 and again in 1984. He wasn’t the first black to do so, however. Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm of New York campaigned for the Democratic nomination in 1972.
Millionaire banker Ben Fernández ran twice — also in 1980 and 1984 — for the Republican nomination.
Sometimes referred to as “Boxcar Ben,” he was born in a railroad boxcar in Kansas City, Kansas, one of seven children of immigrant farm-worker parents, He died in the year 2000.
