Burr Shows Working With Minorities Can Pay Dividends

Where many GOPers talk the talk about working with minorities, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) walks the walk, as demonstrated in a CQ article by Jonathan Allen, “Burr’s Attention to Black Community May Help Save His Seat.” (Full disclosure: I worked for Sen. Burr from 2004-2006.)

Since his victory in 2004, Burr has been a regular presence in every corner of the state, including its Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He’s engaged minority media and worked on legislation of importance to minority communities, including increasing the graduation rates of low-income and minority students. But this isn’t anything new; he’s continuing his work from the House of Representatives. For example, attached to the tobacco buyout legislation that dominated much of the 2004 campaign was language co-authored by then-Rep. Burr on sickle-cell anemia. Larger media organizations in the state didn’t, or wouldn’t, talk about the provision, so it became incumbent on the campaign to keep the African-American community informed.

After every election cycle, Republicans ask themselves how to improve their standing with minority voters, something that was an important priority for former Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman. The follow-through in congressional offices, however, then had a tendency to be nonexistent. Targeting minorities requires too much work and too much money for too few results, the line of thinking usually goes. That conveniently forgets how a point here or there can have a real impact in close elections — we have a Senate seat that remains undecided — and that, as the Allen article makes clear, there is the potential benefit of demonstrating to white voters a candidate “can work across political and racial spectrums.”

Yes, it requires legwork, and it requires listening to communities that may tell a candidate or officeholder something he or she doesn’t want to hear, but that’s part of the job of representing an entire district or state. Allen’s article should serve as a blueprint for Republicans.