Jimmy's Debt to Blacks

"I wish--Lord, how I wish--Martin were alive today," said John Lewis, executive director of the Atlanta-based Voter Education Project. "He would be very, very happy. Through it all, the lunch-counter sit-ins, the bus strike, the marches and everything, the bottom line was voting."

Martin Luther King Jr. would indeed have been pleased if he had seen how the bottom line in 1976 bulged with black votes. In close races in state after state, North and South, they provided Jimmy Carter with his victory margin.

Poor Showing. When contests are so tight, of course, any number of factors can be said to have tipped the balance in favor of the winner--the good weather that brought out large numbers of Democrats, the latest discouraging economic indicators, reservations about Vice Presidential Candidate Robert Dole, the allegations raised against Gerald Ford and dismissed late in the campaign. In 23 states, including all the big ten except Florida and Massachusetts, the winner captured 52% of the vote or less. Redistribution of a mere 8,000 votes would have swung the election to Ford; a juggling of some 200,000 ballots, on the other hand, would have given Carter a landslide of 400 or more electoral votes. Despite his dismally poor showing (.8% of the 80 million votes cast), Eugene McCarthy managed to shift at least three states to the President--Maine, Iowa and Oregon; had he been on the ballot in New York, it is conceivable that McCarthy could have siphoned enough votes from Carter to give the state's 41 electoral votes, and victory, to Ford.

Still, no voting group was more decisive than the blacks. Carter lost the white vote, 47.6% to 51.3%. But he won roughly 92% of the 6.6 million black votes, according to Washington's Joint Center for Political Studies. Though a CBS survey gave Carter only 82% of the black vote and the analysis by Pollster Louis Harris gave him 87.3%, the Joint Center is considered more reliable since it compiled statistics from 1,165 precincts where blacks account for 87% or more of the population. Carter's showing compares well with George McGovern's 87% of the black vote in 1972, Hubert Humphrey's 85% in 1968 and Lyndon Johnson's 94% in 1964. When a large group votes with such near unanimity, it puts a burden on a two-party system. Ultimately, the group could continually deprive one party of victory and wield excessive influence on the other.

On the face of it, the fact that a white Southerner should have benefited so greatly from black votes is an anomaly. To many blacks, it is not surprising. "Black folks intuitively felt a certain kinship with Carter," says Benjamin Hooks, a member of the FCC who has just been named as the next executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. (see box page 22). "There is a certain warmth and camaraderie with Carter. I don't think a Northern white man could have touched that deep well." Adds Lewis, who has dealt with both Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson: "The things Carter has said to me make me feel his sense of understanding and commitment are deeper than Kennedy's or even Johnson's."

According to the Joint Center, the percentage of voting-age blacks who cast ballots rose from 41% in 1972 to 43% this year. The figure is still below the national turnout of 55%--but high enough to have made the difference in a dozen or so crucial states. To cite only one: in Ohio, Carter won by 7,076 votes; he received 282,000 black ballots (see chart). The massive black majority made the South almost solid for Carter (he lost only Virginia); without it, he would have won only Georgia, Arkansas and Tennessee. Ford won 55% of the white vote in the South, a highly creditable showing against a regional candidate.

To say that the President-elect is in debt to blacks is to put it mildly. During the campaign he promised to appoint more blacks to high Government posts than any previous President. The congressional Black Caucus gathered and submitted names; so did other black organizations such as the National Bar Association and the National Medical Association. Said Jeffalyn Johnson, a senior professor at the Federal Executive Development Institute who spent several months working up potential appointee lists: "There is no shortage of black talent in this country."

Packed Bags. At the top of everybody's list is Georgia Congressman Andrew Young, who served as Carter's emissary to both blacks and the white liberal community. But Young appears to be more interested in finding jobs for others than for himself. He wants to stay in the House, where he aspires to be addressed some day as "Mr. Speaker."

Other top candidates for appointment are Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who gave Carter crucial backing in the Michigan primary; Jesse Hill, president of the Atlanta Life Insurance Co.; Herman Russell, an Atlanta contractor; Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Ind.; John Cox, a Delta Airlines consultant who was the only well-known black to support Carter for Georgia Governor in 1970; Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Many others are hoping for a berth. Quips a black Democratic official in Atlanta: "Half the blacks here already have their bags packed to come to Washington."

But jobs are just the beginning. Eddie Williams, president of the Joint Center for Political Studies, believes the time is ripe "to assure that blacks have an equal chance to help shape the nation's policies and programs. A Cabinet post and a special assistant or two will not suffice. The need now is to integrate the policymaking process and to conquer yet another frontier of segregation."

Hooks wants blacks to gain greater access to Government regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Power Commission and the Federal Trade Commission. Said he: "When you put a man on the SEC, he starts talking with all the Wall Street brokers. He says to them in private conversation: 'You ought to do something about black employment.' "

How far will--or can--Carter go in paying off his debt to blacks? Political Analyst Richard Scammon believes the obligation is exaggerated. Many more whites than blacks voted for Carter, he emphasizes. "If Carter had not had the black vote, he would have lost," said Scammon. "But if he had not had the white vote, he would have lost too."

Shrinking Base. Carter's relatively narrow victory may also limit the benefits he can confer on blacks. They were only one element of a coalition that could come unstuck, shrinking Carter's base--and his re-election chances. The softest support of all may prove to be the white Southern voters who saw him as moderately conservative. Southern whites, after all, gave about three-quarters of their votes to Richard Nixon in 1972. If Carter seems to be overly attentive to blacks, they may quickly desert him. Carter's own pollster, Pat Caddell, feels that the Democratic vote among white Southerners was abnormally large; only Native Son Carter could have captured it this year.

A greater long-range peril for the Democrats may be the losing of the West, which gave Ford about as many electoral votes (98) as Carter gained in the South (108). Moreover, the old Democratic coalition proved that it can no longer be counted on. Carter's share of the votes from ethnic groups such as the Irish, the Italians and the Eastern Europeans was reduced from most recent previous Democratic presidential campaigns. As Caddell acknowledged, Democrats will have to garner more moderate, middle-class votes in the industrial North in order to win in the future. In recognition of this trend, Carter offered favors gingerly and sparingly to the groups supporting him during the campaign. He may have to be similarly circumspect as President.

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