By Ken Hamilton
Should President Obama be telling New York Democrats and our Gov. David Paterson who should run and who shouldn’t?
One year and one week ago, I asked my readers if affirmative action ended with an Obama win. While I said that it was just a question, it really wasn’t, it was, indeed, a likely and very predictable outcome.
One year and one week later, candidate Obama is President Obama and what it meant for those of us that live in Niagara Falls is that we have blacks as president, governor, state senator, county legislator and two black city councilmen. We all have pretty much proven together that Legislator Renae Kimble and those who joined her in her NAACP lawsuit against the city were wrong in their contention that a black person couldn’t be elected “at-large.” In fact, it gets no larger than the president. The irony is that the lawsuit took place “after” the city had already elected Councilman Andrew Walker, who was the defense’s Exhibit-A.
In that Sept.18, 2008, column, I said, “For most blacks, (Obama) is the manifestation of a lifelong dream and the redemption of a race of people. “It’s finally our turn,” they whisper. Additionally, “Some whites may look at Obama’s win as the ultimate form of affirmative action, in that no major party would select a white, junior senator with less than four years of federal service for president. In addition to military service, John Kennedy had six years in the House and seven in the Senate before he became president.”
Now, though denied by Paterson, reports are that Obama is telling Paterson not to run for re-election. I don’t know if the president did, or didn’t. But, the question is a fair one — and maybe be a harbinger of not only things to come, but things that have already occurred. This time, it is more out in the open.
As African Americans have for the most part blindly subscribed to the Democrat Party, so have black politicians: so much so that most black politicians put party above race.
So then, why would it be out of the question for Obama to not endorse an incumbent black governor of New York in favor of former HUD secretary and New York’s attorney general and son of the silver-tongued former Governor Mario Cuomo? Haven’t we been putting party interests over race interests for years?
But, is it just party interests for the president? While the Democrats have a controlling margin in the U.S. Senate, it is, nonetheless, a thin and tenuous one. Obama’s popularity is dropping and some of those Senate seats may be lost in the next election. Ensuring that New York elects a Democrat for the senate may be the margin that he needs to push forward some of his unpopular programs. Furthermore, as president and former Gov. Bill Clinton found in dealing with both the Democrat-controlled Arkansas state legislature, and then the federal legislature when he pushed through NAFTA, when unprincipled Democrats have the opportunity to place themselves in a position as deal-makers, and they feel that they might “get something out of it by playing hardball,” too often they do.
But, what about New Yorkers? I hear it, and I hate it, when someone says that Paterson is “unelected.” Whenever I hear it, I think about how stupid these voters are in not knowing that they did indeed vote for Paterson. He was on the ballot as Lt. governor when I didn’t vote for him; so I am assuming that he was also there when the persons that preceded me and followed me pulled the levers for him.
I wrote in last year’s column that, “In their eager willingness to vote for a true African American, for some whites, it shows more of how far they have come in race relations than it shows how far blacks have grown in their political acumen. “Well, now we are possibly looking more at black political acumen than we are in race relations. White politicians have been stabbing other white politicians in the back for years. In fact, black politicians have been stabbing black politicians in the back for quite awhile. Who do you think challenged Councilman Charles Walker’s petitions in his first run for city council?
So then, how does it feel to have reached politically equality?
Let me take a moment to rule out petty politics. While Paterson endorsed then-Senator Hillary Clinton for president over Obama, Obama’s tacit endorsement of Cuomo for governor, who married a Kennedy — whose family did endorse Obama, such a sequence of events would have been poetic justice. However, it would only fuel the argument against affirmative action. While politicians have long exempted themselves from the rules they write, I still doubt if Obama would be that petty. Most New York politicians supported Clinton. If she won, they win; if she lost, and they did not endorse her, then she would have been one scorned woman. Who would want to deal with that serpent’s tooth?
Finally, Pastor Darius Pridgen of True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo once delivered an excellent King birthday speech titled, “Are we there yet?” He asked how would we know when have arrived at racial parity in America. Just a few years after his speech, in New York state we were looking at an Obama presidency and a litany of names like former NYC mayor David Dinkins, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Gov. David Paterson, former State Comptroller Carl McCall, former Rochester Mayor William A. Johnson Jr., Buffalo-Niagara Falls Sen. Antoine Thompson and Buffalo Schools Superintendent James Williams. If Obama did indeed ask our governor not to run for re-election then I don’t think that it is necessary to argue to white America that we are not yet there at political parity.
Racism is still a problem for many African Americans. I write from personal experiences. But I don’t think that we can look any longer to our politicians for the answers. The fight is now up to us as individuals.
Ken Hamilton is a Niagara Falls resident. Contact him at kenhamilton930@aol.com.
