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Invisible candidate

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005

‘‘It was all a swindle, an obscene swindle! They had set themselves up to describe the world. What did they know of us, except that we numbered so many, worked on certain jobs, offered so many votes, and provided so many marchers for some protest parade of theirs?”

— Ralph Ellison, ‘‘Invisible Man”

In his 1952 autobiographical novel, Ralph Ellison’s rage and revulsion at white racism drives him ‘‘underground” into passive resistance against his invisibility in a white world. As a last resort he decides to ‘‘... overcome them with yeses, undermine them with grins, I’d agree them to death and destruction. Yes, I’d let them swoller me until they vomited or burst wide open. Let them gag on what they refused to see.”

Ellison concludes ‘‘Invisible Man” with this passage, ‘‘Being invisible and without substance, a disembodied voice, as it were, what else could I do? What else but try to tell you what was really happening when your eyes were looking through? And it is this which frightens me. Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?”

Going ‘‘underground” may have been Ellison’s only option in the 1950s. But a decade later the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. confronted black invisibility and rewrote the rules of American race relations. However, it remains a work in progress, which brings us to Kweisi Mfume.

Mfume is battling Ben Cardin for the Democratic nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes. But Mfume isn’t just battling Cardin, he’s also battling a concerted effort to make him invisible. Or, as Montgomery County Councilman George Leventhal puts it, ‘‘The Maryland Democratic Party has a perception problem. We appear to be a closed shop.”

The fix was in from the start. When Sarbanes announced his retirement in March, Mfume immediately offered his candidacy. ‘‘For six weeks after Paul retired not one Democrat said, ‘This is our man.’ There was no response from the party,” recalls Mfume. Curious, given that Mfume is a past president of the National NAACP, former Maryland congressman, former Baltimore city councilman and represents the Democrat’s core constituency, blacks.

Then, the day after Cardin entered the race, an NAACP ‘‘internal memo” mysteriously surfaced alleging favoritism and sexual harassment by Mfume. The media gave it broad front page play although the allegations were never corroborated and Mfume’s fund-raising ground to a halt. This obvious smear campaign by Mfume’s enemies within the NAACP set up a daily chant by party leaders and media pundits that Mfume was finished and ought to quit.

Yes, these are the same party officials and pundits who blew off Bill Clinton’s and Parris Glendening’s sexual indiscretions because, ‘‘A public official’s private life is none of our business.” But when it comes to Mfume, he’s unfit to hold office!

Welcome to the Maryland Democratic Party’s ‘‘buddy system” where the anointed get a free pass and others need not apply. And, this year, the party establishment has anointed Ben Cardin to succeed Sarbanes just like it anointed Kathleen Kennedy Townsend to succeed Parris Glendening in 2002.

But don’t blame Cardin. He’s unquestioningly qualified to be a U.S. senator. He’s bright, dedicated, fair, honest, brings 40 years of legislative experience and comes from a family of lawmakers, judges and civic leaders.

But Mfume is unquestioningly qualified, too. He comes from the same city as Cardin, but from a different world. Born in poverty and out of wedlock, his abusive stepfather abandoned the family leaving Mfume to run the streets. By all rights he should be in prison or dead. Instead, through sheer willpower, he turned his life around and became the national voice of America’s invisible underclass.

In the Senate race, Mfume is borrowing a page from King, who challenged a nation that preached racial equality but permitted legal and social apartheid. Mfume is challenging a Democratic Party that preaches inclusion and opportunity but stood by as Republicans, not Democrats, produced Maryland’s first statewide African-American elected official. And just as King bridged the racial divide by linking his civil rights movement to the anti-Vietnam war effort, Mfume is reaching out to anti-Iraq war whites.

Dismissing Mfume is a dangerous game. Blacks make up 33.4 percent of Maryland’s population and, depending on turn-out, nearly 50 percent of the Democratic vote, the party’s largest and most loyal constituency.

Against Cardin, Mfume is the overwhelming underdog given the disparity in funding, endorsements and connections. But Mfume doesn’t mind, he’s always run as the underdog — hell, he’s lived his whole life as an underdog. But he refuses to be invisible. ‘‘Before you check me off, at least listen to me,” he said. ‘‘All I’m asking for is a real race — then, if I lose, I lose.”

The Democratic Party ought to listen. The knock on Cardin is that he’s always had everything on a silver platter, never had a tough race. Now it’s happening again. The party establishment is bullying Mfume out of Ben’s way and offering to heal hurt feelings by moving up the primary election date so blacks have time to cool off.

Ain’t gonna work. The only way to legitimize the Democratic Senate race for Cardin and to unify the party, thereafter, is to permit — no, encourage — an open, fair contest. If Maryland’s black Democrats believe their party made Kweisi Mfume an invisible candidate, they may become invisible voters.

Blair Lee is president of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring.