Guest Author
Notionally, the Charlie Crist campaign for governor is ramping up its efforts to motivate Florida black voters to get to the polls on November 4.
But actually the Crist campaign merely expects black voters to slavishly support him without a compensating policy effort.
This should not be surprising. It is the party of Jackson’s approach par excellence.
Because of Crist’s checkered political history, black voters should expect and demand something more substantive from Crist, and not settle for the woefully inadequate and wholly contradictory promises of his “Fair Shot Florida” plan.
Moreover, the Crist campaign should arrive at more plausible and serious proposals if it intends to entice black voters to make the leap in turnout numbers of 2008 and 2012 — the presidential election and re-election campaigns of Barack Obama.
Or expect the dismal turnout of 2010, the election year of Alex Sink, the worst gubernatorial candidate since Jim Davis, as the result of its political diffidence and disquieting presumption.
Here are some things for the Crist campaign to consider:
–UNEMPLOYMENT. Although jobs numbers have rebounded, the recovery is slow and the national unemployment rate is 6.2 percent, more than a percentage higher than the 5.0 percent pre-2007 Great Recession number.
Add to this Florida’s higher unemployment rate of 6.3 percent, its poverty rate of 14.9 percent vs. a 14.5 U.S. average, a manifestly dour picture of black economic progress with an embarrassing national black unemployment rate of 11.4 percent, and you have a steep mountain to climb to attain black validation as a compelling candidate of choice.
What’s more, blacks have a traditionally higher average unemployment (2.2 times, to be exact) than their white counterparts, and over a 42-year time span, according to a recent Washington Post study, it has reached two-thirds the rate of white unemployment.
In Southern states — Florida, for instance — there has been over time a 114 percent difference in the unemployment rate, to the historic disfavor of blacks.
–MINIMUM WAGE. Of course, this leads to an interesting quandary: the Crist campaign’s $10.10 minimum wage proposal.
According to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study of the federal minimum wage proposal, the $10 budget proposal, while boosting individual and family income, could in the short-term disrupt job gains.
In fact, 500,000 to 1 million jobs could be lost if it were to be implemented.
While bringing into effect any minimum wage law would depend largely on the flexibility and particular nature of certain industries, Florida, largely a low-wage economy based on tourism, construction, and agriculture, could be badly done in by a minimum law in a slowly recovering economy.
In fact, blacks have the greatest to lose, as a larger number of blacks are low-wage workers, especially based in the tourism and construction industries, thus subject to inflexible market conditions.
–COLLEGE AID. While the Crist campaign has talked of “Regional Opportunity Councils” and bolstering university funding, the most important aspect of Crist’s policy agenda is his aim to boost merit-based scholarships and financial aid.
Correctly seen as a middle-class entitlement, the “Florida Bright Futures” scholarship ($266 million) is funded at the expense of financial aid, and needlessly tangles the Crist campaign in a confusing and counterproductive class divide, at the expense of his black supporters.
Currently, average student-held debt in Florida is $15,163, but need-based aid only covers 25 percent of the cost of attending school for its mostly minority student recipients. Moreover, public outlay for higher education has gone from a high of 56 percent (1990-92) to an all-time low of less than 30 percent per pupil.
The Crist campaign, in a bid to attract the middle-class voters, has pledged to restore $190 million to “Florida Bright Futures” when need-based aid provides the greatest means for Florida’s black population to achieve so-called economic mobility.
–OTHER MATTERS. Among other matters that need resolution if the Crist campaign is to avoid being snubbed by black voters, as in the August primary election, when only 15 percent of the state’s 1.6 million blacks marked a ballot: Will a future Crist administration make a first-year case for automatic ex-felon rights restoration? Will it push for a tamer “Stand Your Ground” law? Will it seek funding equity for the historically black Florida A&M University’s engineering school, if the Florida Board of Governor’s study recommends a separation between Florida A&M and Florida State University?
There are about five weeks left until November 4, and it should be interesting whether the Crist campaign decides to overcome its infantile efforts in regard to black voters by meeting them where they are. Which is to say, by taking them seriously.
Chris Timmons is a writer based in Tallahassee. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
