GOP adds minorities to convention delegation

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Thomas is 29, a West Point graduate, a former Army captain turned Columbia business owner and University of South Carolina law student.

He's also black.

Thomas is an early Republican success in what will be an uphill road to genuine diversity.

But through Thomas and others, the state GOP for the first time since 1992 will field a national convention delegation with minorities as full-fledged delegates.

The 89-member group of 46 delegates and 43 alternates that will head to New York in late August will include five minority delegates and four alternates.

Delegates have full floor access and voting privileges.

However, while the GOP group will be 10 percent black and Hispanic, the 62-member Democratic delegation to the party's July gathering in Boston will be 43 percent black.

That's up from 37 percent in 2000 and 23 percent in 1996.

Thomas, vice chairman of the delegation and the state party, said the party's stigma remains among blacks, but is beginning to dissipate with the emerging generation.

"If you look at my age group, 25 to 40, you see an increase in blacks not associating themselves with Democrats," said Thomas, the product of a "very conservative" Atlanta family.

Stigma vanishing?

"That stigma doesn't attach to me, and when you look at my age group, it's really starting to erase itself," he said in a telephone interview from London, where he is taking a course on international dispute resolution.

The re-emergence of diversity in the Republican National Convention delegation stemmed from a shift in outreach from state-level committees back to precinct and county organizations, Thomas and others said.

"Grass-roots work at the county level paid off" in greater minority participation there, resulting in more minorities eligible to run for delegate seats at the district and state conventions, Thomas said.

Four years ago, the 74-person Republican delegation to the Philadelphia convention included a single black alternate, leaving it 99 percent white. In 1996, there were three minority alternates.

Each party, however, is increasing its minority representation in the eagerly sought, high-profile national convention delegation slots.

Base still small

But Republicans remain hampered by their continued inability to attract more than single-digit percentages of blacks in most elections and, by extension, to participation in local precincts, the basic building block of politics and the starting point on the road to delegate seats.

For example, there is no current black Republican county party chairman, although there is one Hispanic chairman, Sam Cerezo in Lee County. There are only two elected black Republicans, county council members in Charleston and Beaufort.

Black Democrats chair 10 of the 46 county organizations.

Michelle Macrina, acting executive director of the state Democratic Party, said, "It's great that Republicans are getting more minority delegates," but she said there's no sign of GOP inroads at the ballot box.

New approach

Current, modest Republican minority growth has come mainly through "talking to folks, recruiting and behind-the-scenes efforts to grow the party" by shifting responsibility away from remote state-level committees onto local party activists, said Luke Byars, state GOP executive director.

"We've been more successful at the local level than we ever were at the state level," Byars said, adding that "these are first steps, baby steps."

While the party still retains the stigma of association with the Confederate battle flag and a perception of being anti-civil rights in much of the minority community, Byars said there is an untapped resource of "like-minded Hispanics and blacks in South Carolina that agree with Gov. Sanford and President Bush on tax relief and social issues."

Byars said, "We've had to fight through the politics of the past, but we're finding they're receptive to the message. We're not changing our message or philosophy, but we're finding new ways to communicate on the local level."

In another time ...

There was a time when that wasn't necessary, at least until the Democratic Party's strong civil rights platform began a landmark transition beginning with President Harry Truman's desegregation of the armed force after World War II.

As late as 1956, many South Carolina blacks still identified with the party of Abraham Lincoln, even if barred from voting by race-based registration requirements in what was then a solidly Democratic state.

I. DeQuincy Newman, an early civil rights activist, was a delegate to the 1956 Republican National Convention. In 1983, he won a special election — as a Democrat — to become South Carolina's first black state senator since the 19th century.

The 2004 Democratic delegation, under party rules, must be almost equally apportioned between men and women. This year there are 32 men among the 62 delegates and alternates.

Republicans number 59 men and 30 women, little changed from 2000's 52-22 split.

Those who win national delegate seats must start by attending precinct caucuses, then win district and state convention delegate slots at their county conventions.

Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.