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Stepping up to the plate

African-American candidates finally emerging as a force in Montgomery County politics

Friday, March 17, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Dan Gross⁄The Gazette Linda Plummer, flanked by U.S. Senate candidate Kweisi Mfume (right) and Montgomery County Council candidate Reginald M. Felton, blames the lack of African American elected leaders in Montgomery on a lack of support from the mainstream political organizations. ‘‘The Democratic Party needs to recognize that we’re tired of the same old game. We’re told how great we are, but we have to fight to get everything we get,” said Plummer, who ran for the House of Delegates in 2002. ‘‘Every once in a while we get a token election and that’s it.”

As far as African Americans were concerned, ‘‘We’ve come a long way, baby” was just a slogan on the side of a cigarette package, not the statement of racial progressiveness it had come to symbolize following the civil rights movement.

When Isiah ‘‘Ike” Leggett (D) became the first African American elected to the County Council in 1986, others were expected to follow. But that never happened.

Leggett remains the only African American elected to a county partisan political office. The nonpartisan school board has had many more black members, starting with James H. Daugherty (elected in 1970), Roscoe Nix (in 1974) and Odessa M. Shannon (in 1982). And the county’s State House delegation remained essentially all white until 2002 when African Americans Herman L. Taylor (D-Dist. 14) of Ashton and Gareth E. Murray (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring were elected to the House.

‘‘We should be shocked. We should be embarrassed [by the lack of African-American officials] in Montgomery County, and we continue to be disappointed,” said Reginald M. Felton (D), a former school board president running at large for the County Council.

This year the slate of African-American candidates in the county has increased significantly, as those from the older guard — like Leggett— are being joined by first-time candidates like Hugh Bailey, who is running for a council at-large position.

‘‘When I was first elected, African Americans only made up 5 or 6 percent of the county’s population and many people thought it was impossible to get an African-American candidate elected countywide,” said Leggett, who is running this year for county executive. ‘‘I wouldn’t put a face on my campaign literature because I wanted to de-emphasize race and focus on my qualifications.”

Since Leggett was first elected 20 years ago, the county’s black population has increased. Park and Planning figures put the county’s African-American population at 14 percent in its 2003 census update survey, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey put it at 14.9 percent in 2004.

With that growth over two decades, the number of African Americans elected to office could have been expected to increase as well. That has not been the case; only two more African Americans have been elected to the school board and not one since Leggett has been elected to the County Council. (In 2002, the Rev. Donell Peterman was appointed to complete the term of Councilman Derick P. Berlage, who was named Planning Board chairman. This year, Peterman (D) is running at large for County Council.)

Why did political advancement of African Americans in the county stall?

There a number of reasons, Felton said.

‘‘Looking back at the early African-American [county] community, many were federal employees unable to participate in partisan politics, so they only had the school board,” said Felton, who served on the board for 10 years, beginning in 1994. ‘‘And even if not employed by the federal government, many did not have jobs with the flexibility needed to run for office. Also, elections are expensive, and most candidates couldn’t fund them on their own.”

A larger impediment than the career constraints was the lack of support from the county’s mainstream political groups, specifically the county’s Democratic Party, said Linda Plummer, a former president of the county’s NAACP.

‘‘I don’t think the party had the clout to ignite an African-American candidate promotion. There are folks in the party that still think they are running the party,” she said. ‘‘I think the Democratic Party needs to recognize that we’re tired of the same old game. We’re told how great we are, but we have to fight to get everything we get. Every once in a while we get a token election and that’s it.”

Her unsuccessful 2002 campaign for House of Delegates yielded conflicting support, Plummer said. ‘‘Everyone was saying that they supported me, but saying and doing are two different things. The games are getting old.”

Getting qualified candidates to run for office has been another hurdle, said Leggett, who founded the African American Democratic Club of Montgomery County in 2001 to mentor candidates and get the black community more involved.

‘‘It’s a two-way street, you have to run candidates who are willing to run and sometimes willing to lose,” he said. ‘‘I think conditions are better than when I first ran, but it does not mean that there are not still challenges out there.”

To increase candidate involvement for not only African Americans, but for others, Leggett is proposing to increase the number of County Council seats from nine to 11, with eight seats based in districts.

Because no minority group is an overwhelming majority in any council district, Leggett is hoping candidates can win the seats based on their district support. So far in the 2006 election, all of the announced African-American County Council candidates still are running at large.

Leggett, a former state Democratic Party chairman, and others also admit that efforts on their part to mentor younger candidates could have been better.

But with this election, African Americans finally seem to be making strides, said Ann DeLacy, president of the county’s African American Democratic Club.

‘‘I think that people feel empowered, that they can do it now,” she said. ‘‘If the message is strong enough, if it’s compelling and you make your message broad enough, people will vote.”

Still, African Americans have hurdles to overcome when it comes to being elected.

‘‘I think we have come a long way in race relations, but research indicates that there is racial voting which sometimes keeps minorities from elected office,” said Ronald W. Walters, politics professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. ‘‘Let’s not be naïve about it. It’s still very strong.”