Atwater protege Williams leads GOP back to Blacks

Alvin Williams sees African Americans becoming disillusioned with the Democratic Party, and says Republicans overlook blacks' innate conservatism and fail to court their votes.

Black political activist Alvin Williams learned much of what he knows about politics by working with the late Lee Atwater during the Bush presidential campaign of 1988 and as an Atwater aide at the Republican National Committee. He recalls Atwater as "a true practitioner of the art of politics." Williams went on to work with Alan Keyes during Keyes' Maryland senatorial campaign of 1992 and during Keyes' presidential campaign in 1995.

These days, Williams is executive director of BAMPAC, Black America's Political Action Committee, which he and Keyes founded in 1993. The New York Times and Business Week have described BAMPAC as America fastest-growing political-action committee. During the 1996 election, the Federal Election Commission ranked BAMPAC seventh in contributions received and 30th for contributions distributed out of afield of 4,079 PACs.

Black conservatism no longer is the anomaly it was five or 10 years ago, Williams tells Insight. "People don't jump as much when we come out on the conservative side on the issues. They listen."

Insight: What does BAMPAC do?

Alvin Williams: We're a political-action committee promoting conservative positions on important issues of the day. We like to think that the positions we take as a PAC are those rank-and-file black Americans are thinking about and taking.

We truly believe, and there's research to prove this, that the black community is quite conservative: It has the highest church participation of any group in America, for example, and it's a community concerned about crime because crime occurs disproportionately in black neighborhoods. Also, we're seeing that the school-choice debate really is catching on in the black community as a movement that can give fundamental choice to those parents who ordinarily do not have it to select better schools for their children.

At BAMPAC we're technically nonpartisan. We place the emphasis on issues, and less on political parties, though most of the candidates we support do happen to be Republicans. We have supported what we deem to be conservative Democrats, but some have switched parties now [laughter].

Insight: Why have Republicans failed to tap into black conservatism?

AW: I think a lot of it resulted from political calculation. It's widely known that the Democratic Party's base is labor unions, blacks, women. If you have limited resources, why try to convert the other fellow's base? But there's another side of this: It also is widely known and fairly understood that the Democratic Party has taken--and does take--black voters for granted.

As the face of America is beginning to change, and as we see that America is browning, there's a new political reality. The Republican Party has to target this vote and campaign for it. I think the GOP will be surprised that, when you court the black vote like you do any other vote, it will yield dividends.

George Voinovich did it in Ohio. George Bush Jr. certainly did it in Texas. Jeb Bush is doing it in Florida.

Insight: Will more blacks be joining the Republican Party?

AW: I think the Democratic Party is stumbling of late. Blacks really are becoming disillusioned with the Democratic Party. I don't think they're going to leave it in droves, but you have a new profile of black voters who don't have the scars their parents have, who are looking at our system more from a point of view of self-interest, and I think those voters certainly can be targeted. A few weeks ago the Washington Post did an article saying the Democrats can no longer take the black voters for granted. The Economist also did a story a month or so ago on blacks in the GOP, J.C. Watts and BAMPAC. One of the things they mentioned in the article was that black conservatism was the most formidable it's ever been.

I think we're poised on the cutting edge of a new body politic in America, and I think BAMPAC is symptomatic of that change.

Insight: Do many blacks view the Republican Party as racist?

AW: That perception is definitely there, and we would delude ourselves to think otherwise. This is what we've been struggling with. And it has been a struggle. Think of people like Dr. Martin Luther King and Phillip Randolph, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, people who step by step held this country's feet to the fire on the principle that all men are created equal and that the country's minority populations have equal rights as far as civil and voting rights are concerned.

But I think racism is an American phenomenon, not a political-party problem. I think we have turned the comer in this country as far as basic human rights are concerned. We've got to keep mindful, keep pushing and pulling, but visible progress has been made. It aggravates me when I hear from time to time someone say we haven't made any gains. We have, and for that reason I think America is a beacon for the rest of the world. But we haven't gone as far as we could go.