Race plays small role in 2006 statewide contests

WASHINGTON -- Race remains a simmering force in American politics. It can pop up suddenly, as Virginia Senator George Allen can attest. His ill-advised rant against a young Indian-American supporter of his opponent, former Navy Secretary James Webb, has jeopardized his reelection.

But what's more noteworthy in the 2006 elections is how small a role race has played in statewide races involving black candidates.

Last week, the Republican National Senatorial Committee ran an ad accusing Tennessee Representative Harold Ford Jr., the state's Democratic senatorial nominee, of consorting with Playboy ``playmates." It turns out the 36-year-old congressman, an African-American who is unmarried, attended a 2005 Super Bowl party sponsored by Playboy magazine.

The ad is an amplification of a website the Republican National Committee began earlier this year called ``Fancy Ford," suggesting that Ford lives a high life of ``lavish hotels," expensive meals, and flashy women. The site describes how during the ``NBA All-Star Weekend" Ford visited a place called the Whiskey Bar, with ``black laquered and mirrored walls." The GOP site then declares, ``I bet the party was fab-u-lous."

The new commercial from the RNSC asks, ``What kind of a man parties with Playboy playmates in lingerie, then films political ads from a church pew?"

In past elections, such a campaign theme might have set off a raucous protest that such accusations play on racial stereotypes. This year, Ford chose to fire back in kind, declaring, ``I'm not going to take a lecture on morality from a party that took hush money from a child predator."

So far, Ford has done very well by keeping the race card buried in the deck. He leads his Republican opponent, former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, in several recent polls.

Ford's approach has been similar to that of Massachusetts' Democratic gubernatorial nominee Deval Patrick, who is also black and has also weathered criticism of a rich lifestyle without raising a racial complaint. (Since several recent white candidates in Massachusetts, including former governor Paul Cellucci, have been tagged for expensive living, Patrick may not have had good cause for complaint.)

More recently, though, Patrick has been under fire from his Republican opponent, Kerry Healey, for his exertions on behalf of convicted rapist Benjamin LaGuer. It hasn't escaped notice in the blogosphere that this is the first appearance of a black rapist from Massachusetts in a political race since Willie Horton. Back in 1988, the Republican ad against Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis that featured Horton was widely criticized as an appeal to racist sentiments.

But Patrick, who was slow to respond to accusations that he had turned a blind eye to LaGuer's offense, nonetheless refrained from suggesting there was any racial dimension to the issue.

Perhaps he and Ford simply believe that such charges don't play on racial stereotypes. But more likely, they realized that playing the race card diminishes them by turning them into a stereotype: The black candidate demanding special consideration because of his race.

Black Republicans have long made it a point of pride not to ask for special consideration. And this year, black Republican nominees including Ohio Secretary of State Kent Blackwell, who is running for governor, and Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele of Maryland, who is running for the Senate, haven't cited their race to blunt political attacks. (One exception was the egregious case of a blogger who portrayed Steele as a minstrel in blackface.)

And Steele has answered questions about his personal spending without raising a racial issue.

Perhaps Ford and Patrick have learned from black Republicans like Blackwell and Steele that the best way to win white votes is to maintain an air of strict racial neutrality. More likely, they've learned from Barack Obama, the only African-American in the Senate and a Democrat from Illinois, that black candidates can win over white voters with a broad message of overcoming national divisions.

Obama, perhaps more than any other figure on the national stage, has tapped into the yearning for civility and unity in politics; it's a natural message for a black candidate, because blacks are such a small part of the national political system that they can hardly be blamed for its woes.

Among black nominees for top statewide offices, only Blackwell, who is running on a platform of strict opposition to abortion and gay marriage, seems unaware of Obama's success.

Ford, Patrick, and Steele are all preaching inclusion. They're all, to an extent, the sons of Obama.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond.