Anderson@Large

Cornbread, the Godfather of Graffiti

There are a lot of Godfathers. Herman Cain, the former president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, is running for the GOP presidential nomination.

There’s “The Godfather” movie franchise. Back in the day, there was the blaxploitation film, “The Black Godfather.”

There’s also the inimitable “Godfather of Soul,” James Brown.

On Saturday, I learned about Darryl “Cornbread” McCray, the self-proclaimed “Godfather of Graffiti.”

Cornbread’s prodigious street art gave rise to Philadelphia’s Mural Arts Program. What started out as the Anti-Graffiti Network now has more than 3,000 murals, including the African American Iconic Images Collection.

If you can’t make it to Philly, you can take the interactive mural tour narrated by ?uestlove of The Roots.

Curtains for Michael Steele

The vote to decide the fate of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele starts today at approximately 12:45 pm ET.

The Associated Press reports:

His re-election bid in serious doubt, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele sought support from members of his party's central committee Thursday as he struggled to avert defeat after a free-spending, gaffe-filled two years.

[…]

Weary of Steele's gaffes, missteps and high spending, many members of the cash-strapped central seemed eager to boot Steele from the job after only two years and make room for someone new. Steele's RNC raised almost $80 million ahead of November elections, spent all of it and then took out a $15 million loan.

Steele reportedly will stay in the race until the final round. But the election outcome is a foregone conclusion. With a $20 $21.3 million debt, "slum love" doesn't pay the bills.

Steele Won and Done

As I watched the Republican National Committee chairman's debate, it was clear RNC Chairman Michael Steele has lost his swagga. Truth be told, Steele's claim to street cred was always laughable.

Equally laughable was Steele taking credit for every Republican victory since 2009:

My record stands for itself. We won. I was asked to win elections...We won.

Whatever. I don't think Steele won any new supporters among the 168 members of the Committee who will decide his fate on Jan. 14.

At the same time, I don't think his challengers scored a knockout punch. They took jabs at Steele, but they mostly came across as workhorses who would “work like a dog” and focus on reducing the RNC's $20 million debt.

Still, I think Steele is one and done. He has lost the confidence of major donors and the self-styled hip-hop chairman should know “it's all about the benjamins, baby.”

The bottom line: Steele has worn out his welcome. He doesn't stand a prayer of a chance of winning reelection.

At one point in the debate, Steele said, “All of us are going to need to retire. Sooner than later for some.” That may have been a Freudian slip.

In any case, Steele, a former seminary student, should accept he “ain't got long to steal away.”

2011 RNC Chairman’s Debate

I had planned to attend the RNC's chairman's debate at the National Press Club. Instead, I am stuck in Philadelphia so I will watch it on C-SPAN.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said:

The actual vote for RNC Chairman will be made by the 168 members of the Committee, but the impact will be felt by all. Therefore, every activist should play a role in questioning the candidates and communicating with RNC members who cast votes...just like lobbying your Congressman and Senators.

As in 2009, the current chairman is fighting to hold on to his job. Then it was Mike Duncan. Now, it's Michael Steele, who won on the sixth ballot.

Although Steele takes credit for the Democrats' shellacking in the midterm elections, he may not make it to the second ballot. Politico reports a majority of Committee members oppose him.

Steele is being challenged by Wisconsin GOP chairman Reince Priebus, former Michigan GOP chairman Saul Anuzis, former RNC co-chairman Ann Wagner, longtime GOP operative Maria Cino, and former RNC political director Gentry Collins. Collins dropped out of the race last night.

According to the National Journal Whip Count, Priebus is leading the pack with 30 public endorsements, followed by Steele with 15. To win, a candidate must gain the support of 85 of the 168 Committee members. As of Jan. 1, 92 are undeclared.

The debate will be streamed live beginning at 1:00 pm. ET.

Candidates for RNC Chair Attend Tea-infused Forum

The National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar heralds the GOP as the party of diversity:

The GOP success this year in electing minority leaders who can appeal to a wide cross-section of voters should serve as a wake-up call to Democrats, who are accustomed to carrying the mantle of diversity. If Democrats don’t address their own challenges recruiting minority candidates with widespread appeal, the rise of Obama could be more the exception than the rule.

There will be less diversity at the top when the Republican National Committee elects its new chairman in January.

I had planned to attend FreedomWorks’ tea-party-cum-candidate-forum to vet the candidates for the position of RNC chairman. Instead, I was stuck in Philadelphia so I viewed the live stream of the event.

Four of the six announced candidates showed up -- Michigan GOP national committeeman Saul Anuzis; former RNC political director Gentry Collins, former RNC co-chairwoman Ann Wagner and former RNC chairman Mike Duncan.

The candidates agreed that current chairman Michael Steele failed as a fundraiser and steward of the party’s finances. Collins said:

The party under his leadership failed to raise the major donor money it is going to require to defeat Barack Obama, defeat his policies and defeat his ideology and agenda in 2012.

Anuzis noted, “It takes two things to win an election: money and everything else.” And added:

We are in a situation where we need a different type of leader for a different type of challenge. We’re going to have to raise more money than we ever have before, and we have to put together a better ground operation than we have before.

Although no frontrunner emerged, Anuzis was the clear favorite of the online audience.

Steele has yet to say whether he will seek a second term, but he was the clear loser.

The final nails in Steele’s coffin are reports of too many Cooks on the RNC payroll. The Daily Caller reports:

If it wasn’t enough for Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s former personal assistant, her son and her sister to be leading the preparations for the party’s national convention in Tampa in 2012, fear not. There are more Cooks in the RNC’s kitchen.

Also on the payroll of the Committee on Arrangements for the Republican National Convention is Pamela Kesner, Belinda Cook’s niece.

While Steele fancies himself a chairman for the grassroots, they also want him to get to stepping. A new Public Policy Polling survey found Republican voters oppose his reelection by more than a 2:1 margin.

It looks like the party is over for Steele.

GOP’s and Black America’s Racial Challenge

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, Prof. Zoltan Hajnal outlined the demographic challenge facing the Republican Party. Hajnal wrote:

Lost in the GOP’s euphoria over its landslide midterm victory is the fact that the Republican Party has almost become a whites-only party. Its strategy may win seats now, but it will lose over the long run.

Republicans won big in 2010 primarily because they won big among white voters. The 60% of the white vote that Republicans garnered last Tuesday is, by most estimates, the highest proportion of the white vote that the GOP has won in any national election since World War II.

Hajnal continued:

The problem for Republicans is two-fold. First, whites may currently be the majority but they are a declining demographic. The proportion of all voters who are white has already declined to 75% today from 94% in 1960. By 2050, whites are no longer expected to be a majority of the U.S. population.

African Americans also face a demographic imperative.

Consider: Six of the top ten states of the New Great Migration of African Americans are in the South -- Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, Texas, Tennessee and South Carolina. Republicans dominate the congressional delegations, and control the statehouses and state legislatures.

The states with the highest concentrations of African Americans are also in the South. The percentage of the black population ranges from 36.3 percent in Mississippi to 21.6 percent in North Carolina.

While two black Republicans were elected from the South, they represent majority-white districts. BTW, former congressmen J.C. Watts and Gary Franks also represented majority-white districts. The real breakthrough will come when a black Republican is elected from a majority-black district.

In the absence of a Great Migration 2.0, black folks will have to rethink their politics or resign themselves to political marginalization.

For more info, check out “The New Great Migration: Black Americans’ Return to the South, 1965–2000.”

Ain’t No Party like a UNI-TEA Party

Those words were spoken by rapper Jericho Saliz, who performed at Saturday’s UNI-TEA rally in Philadelphia.

David Webb emceed the event.

Webb said the idea for the rally pre-dated the Shirley Sherrod debacle:

It’s not a reaction to the recent news cycle. It’s a proactive move conceived by the idea that we need to show what the Tea Party is all about...This movement has blown up.

UNI-TEA attracted roughly 300 people. Like most conservative events, there were nearly as many African Americans on the stage as in the crowd.

During an appearance on Fox News’ “Geraldo At Large,” Webb said it was not about the numbers:

I didn’t realize there was a minimum number of black people to legitimize it.

I interviewed several of the black tea partiers. They share Webb’s commitment to “limited, efficient and effective government.” They were there to “send a message to America that this is [their] movement.”

The NAACP’s resolution was on people’s minds. While noting he doesn’t want to belabor the issue, Webb added:

We must address the issues where they stand. We must defend an American movement.

The blogger at the center of the latest racial dust-up, Andrew Breitbart, was one of the speakers.

During an interview with Newsweek , Breitbart said he would like to speak with Sherrod in private. I caught up with Breitbart in the middle of a media scrum.

I asked Breitbart what he would say to Sherrod if she were here. His response, “I’m not talking about that today.”

Breitbart had a lot to say about the allegation that members of the Congressional Black Caucus were called the n-word:

These people were there to provoke a YouTube moment. And when the good people of the Tea Party, 40,000 strong, did not provide them with that moment, something really rotten happened. They made it up.

Breitbart blasted the mainstream media:

These people overplayed their hands in our new media world. Why do we have a new media world? To a great extent because we don’t trust the mainstream media. So we are armed with cameras and we are on the lookout for their lies…They would have gotten away with it 10 years ago. They would have gotten away with it 15 years ago…We are watching you. We are the mainstream media now because we don’t trust you.

A number of speakers, including Breitbart, read verbatim Dr. Mary Frances Berry’s post to Politico:

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

Tea partiers feel vindicated by Berry’s truth-telling, as well as recent reports that liberal journalists were prepared to play the race card in 2008 to help then-candidate Barack Obama survive the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy.

As this sign from an earlier rally makes clear, tea partiers fully intend to push back against accusations of racism.

So playing the race card is as inconsequential as throwing water on a duck’s back.

Tea partiers’ anger is boiling over, but the true measure of the movement will be whether their candidates win in November.

UPDATE: Event organizer Jeffrey Weingarten left this comment on my Facebook wall: “Our estimates show there were over 1,000 different folks who visited UNI-TEA during the day.”