Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
Or how unnecessary it was for you to post it.
Or how unnecessary it was for you to post it.
N.J. Senator Lautenberg, Dies; Cory Booker Wins
- Thread starter QueEx
- Start date
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
Let's see, in 2006 I voted none of the above in the only federal race because my congressional Representative was Jesse Jackson Jr. In hindsight, that was the last election I believed in the American system. I voted third party and it helped them meet the percentage threshold to receive enough public funds, in the future, to field candidates for every state-wide office.
I proudly haven't voted since.
The VRA, that was ruled against, should be respected for what it did in the past then gotten over.
How convenient that you "don't know about 2006."
Let's see, in 2006 I voted none of the above in the only federal race because my congressional Representative was Jesse Jackson Jr. In hindsight, that was the last election I believed in the American system. I voted third party and it helped them meet the percentage threshold to receive enough public funds, in the future, to field candidates for every state-wide office.
I proudly haven't voted since.
The VRA, that was ruled against, should be respected for what it did in the past then gotten over.
Should we audit your posts for relevance? Like obscure state-level Montana Republicans or unimportant Arkansas republicans.
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
Chris Christie Endorses
Koch Brothers Operative For Senate
Sen. nominee Steve Lonegan (R-NJ) and
Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) at a 2009 debate
SOURCE
Chris Christie Endorses
Koch Brothers Operative For Senate
Sen. nominee Steve Lonegan (R-NJ) and
Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) at a 2009 debate
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) endorsed Steve Lonegan (R), the former New Jersey head for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, for U.S. Senate on Tuesday. Though Christie ran in 2009 promising a middle-of-the-road “common-sense approach,” this move puts him squarely behind a far-right Tea Party candidate best known for his attacks on immigration and Spanish-language ads — and his own record of hiring undocumented immigrants.
In his unsuccessful 2009 gubernatorial primary campaign against the now-Governor, Lonegan remarked, “It’s clear to me that Mr. Christie is in over his head,” and ran as the more conservative candidate. But Christie’s record closely mirrors Lonegan’s on key issues:
Christie, in his endorsement, reportedly pledged to appear again with Lonegan and help him raise money, noting that both stand for low taxes and small government.
Lonegan, a former Mayor of Bogota, NJ, and a two-time failed gubernatorial candidate, will face Newark Mayor Corey Booker (D) in an October 16 special election to fill in the remainder of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D) term. Christie’s handpicked interim Senator, Jeff Chiesa (R), will also endorse Lonegan Wednesday.
In his unsuccessful 2009 gubernatorial primary campaign against the now-Governor, Lonegan remarked, “It’s clear to me that Mr. Christie is in over his head,” and ran as the more conservative candidate. But Christie’s record closely mirrors Lonegan’s on key issues:
1. Both ignore climate-change science. Lonegan, whose longstanding ties to Charles and David Koch make his position unsurprising, has called climate science “silly hysteria.” His campaign site website boasts of his opposition to “the radical ‘Green’ agenda” and spending money to combat “alleged ‘Global Warming.’” As New Jersey head for Americans for Prosperity, he strongly backed a 2011 New Hampshire bill to withdraw the Granite State from a regional greenhouse gas compact and urged New Jersey to do the same. Though Christie, who had been skeptical of climate science, conceded in 2011 that “climate change is real,” he still followed Lonegan’s advice and pulled New Jersey out of the successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. After Superstorm Sandy ravaged New Jersey, Christie incorrectly claimed there was no proof that climate change had had anything to do with it.
2. Both strongly oppose marriage equality. Lonegan’s website makes clear that he does not support equal marriage rights for same-sex couples: “Steve believes in the long-standing definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman and opposes the federal government forcing gay marriage on states.” He bashes his opponent for supporting, “the federal government mandating gay marriage on all 50 states, including all government benefits,” and has warned of “an all-out assault on the sanctity of marriage and the family in this country.” Christie vetoed a marriage-equality bill last year, claiming that marriage equality is not about “gay rights.” Though a super-majority of New Jersey voters support marriage equality, Christie’s administration continues to fight a court challenge which to allow New Jersey families to have equal legal rights as guaranteed by the state’s constitution.
3. Both have fought women’s health access. Steve Lonegan, who says he his “pro-life” and won’t apologize for it, wants to defund Planned Parenthood, saying since the women’s health provider also offers abortion services, “I would defund it, absolutely.” Christie, the first New Jersey governor to oppose abortion rights since Roe v. Wade, eliminated $7.4 million in family planning funds and rescinded a state application for federal family planning funds.
4. Both want to undermine Obamacare. Lonegan proudly proclaims that he was “one of the earliest opponents of the President’s Health Care law and organized thousands of New Jersey taxpayers to fight it.” Now he backs “full ObamaCare Repeal” and vows to “use his power as a United States Senator to block funding and implementation of this dangerous proposal.” Christie twice vetoed a bill to allow New Jersey to setup a health insurance exchange under Obamacare and has called the universal healthcare law a “sad legacy” for President Obama.
5. Both opposed a state-level DREAM Act for undocumented youth. Lonegan, a fierce opponent of what he terms “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, attacked a proposal by then-Gov. Jon Corzine (D) to offer in-state tuition to undocumented youth going to state colleges and universities as “chock-full of left-wing nonsense that would make this state a magnet for undocumented or illegal workers.” Christie also panned the idea: “I do not believe that, for the people who came here illegally, that we should be subsidizing, with taxpayer money, through in-state tuition, their education.”
6. Both want to funnel public funds in private and parochial schools through vouchers. Lonegan says the federal government’s involvement in education has been “an overall negative” and that he is a “strong supporter of school voucher and tax credit ideas that put parents in charge of their children’s education.” He has criticized his opponent for not doing enough to implement school vouchers. Christie also strongly backs school vouchers, pushing to siphon public funds to private and religious schools. Both have claimed that this competition — and accompanying reduced funding — will somehow improve under-performing public schools.
7. Both oppose popular gun violence reduction measures. Lonegan says he “supports the individual right to keep and bear arms and opposes new federal gun control laws.” In endorsing his candidacy, far-right icon Phyllis Schlafly praised him for his consistent support for the Second Amendment. Christie opposed New Jersey’s one-gun-a-month limit and has been strongly critical of President Obama’s approach, calling instead for “violence control.” This week, he even vetoed a ban on military sniper rifles — that he had earlier proposed — and blocked legislation to expand background checks for private gun sales.
2. Both strongly oppose marriage equality. Lonegan’s website makes clear that he does not support equal marriage rights for same-sex couples: “Steve believes in the long-standing definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman and opposes the federal government forcing gay marriage on states.” He bashes his opponent for supporting, “the federal government mandating gay marriage on all 50 states, including all government benefits,” and has warned of “an all-out assault on the sanctity of marriage and the family in this country.” Christie vetoed a marriage-equality bill last year, claiming that marriage equality is not about “gay rights.” Though a super-majority of New Jersey voters support marriage equality, Christie’s administration continues to fight a court challenge which to allow New Jersey families to have equal legal rights as guaranteed by the state’s constitution.
3. Both have fought women’s health access. Steve Lonegan, who says he his “pro-life” and won’t apologize for it, wants to defund Planned Parenthood, saying since the women’s health provider also offers abortion services, “I would defund it, absolutely.” Christie, the first New Jersey governor to oppose abortion rights since Roe v. Wade, eliminated $7.4 million in family planning funds and rescinded a state application for federal family planning funds.
4. Both want to undermine Obamacare. Lonegan proudly proclaims that he was “one of the earliest opponents of the President’s Health Care law and organized thousands of New Jersey taxpayers to fight it.” Now he backs “full ObamaCare Repeal” and vows to “use his power as a United States Senator to block funding and implementation of this dangerous proposal.” Christie twice vetoed a bill to allow New Jersey to setup a health insurance exchange under Obamacare and has called the universal healthcare law a “sad legacy” for President Obama.
5. Both opposed a state-level DREAM Act for undocumented youth. Lonegan, a fierce opponent of what he terms “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants, attacked a proposal by then-Gov. Jon Corzine (D) to offer in-state tuition to undocumented youth going to state colleges and universities as “chock-full of left-wing nonsense that would make this state a magnet for undocumented or illegal workers.” Christie also panned the idea: “I do not believe that, for the people who came here illegally, that we should be subsidizing, with taxpayer money, through in-state tuition, their education.”
6. Both want to funnel public funds in private and parochial schools through vouchers. Lonegan says the federal government’s involvement in education has been “an overall negative” and that he is a “strong supporter of school voucher and tax credit ideas that put parents in charge of their children’s education.” He has criticized his opponent for not doing enough to implement school vouchers. Christie also strongly backs school vouchers, pushing to siphon public funds to private and religious schools. Both have claimed that this competition — and accompanying reduced funding — will somehow improve under-performing public schools.
7. Both oppose popular gun violence reduction measures. Lonegan says he “supports the individual right to keep and bear arms and opposes new federal gun control laws.” In endorsing his candidacy, far-right icon Phyllis Schlafly praised him for his consistent support for the Second Amendment. Christie opposed New Jersey’s one-gun-a-month limit and has been strongly critical of President Obama’s approach, calling instead for “violence control.” This week, he even vetoed a ban on military sniper rifles — that he had earlier proposed — and blocked legislation to expand background checks for private gun sales.
Christie, in his endorsement, reportedly pledged to appear again with Lonegan and help him raise money, noting that both stand for low taxes and small government.
Lonegan, a former Mayor of Bogota, NJ, and a two-time failed gubernatorial candidate, will face Newark Mayor Corey Booker (D) in an October 16 special election to fill in the remainder of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D) term. Christie’s handpicked interim Senator, Jeff Chiesa (R), will also endorse Lonegan Wednesday.
SOURCE
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
My posts are records of how deep racism as a theme is permeated throughout today's republican party.
Do you have comparable records on today's democratic party?
My posts are records of how deep racism as a theme is permeated throughout today's republican party.
Do you have comparable records on today's democratic party?
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
Yes, it's called the state of the black community.
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
Mods please delete any thread talking about health disparities, income gap, wealth gap, education, political representation, incarceration rates, and anything else outside of thoughtone's picture.
Good job thoughtone. I'm so shook, I'm sweating over here. Damn. I'm going to register Democrat right now.
You killed it. Talking point murdered.
Mods please delete any thread talking about health disparities, income gap, wealth gap, education, political representation, incarceration rates, and anything else outside of thoughtone's picture.
Good job thoughtone. I'm so shook, I'm sweating over here. Damn. I'm going to register Democrat right now.
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
LOL! UD hit a nerve by saying your talking point was murdered!
Typical of you and your type to misrepresent everything. You should definitely work for the Faux Snooze network. That is definitely one of their tactics.
LOL! UD hit a nerve by saying your talking point was murdered!
Typical of you and your type to misrepresent everything. You should definitely work for the Faux Snooze network. That is definitely one of their tactics.
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
I thought the results of their policies showed pure contempt for black people. You showed me how good we have it.
Obviously, I should reassess my opinion of Democratic policies in these blue states, counties, and cities. I mean, what's better than what we got here?
Misrepresent? I said the state of the black community is reflective of Democratic policies and indicative of what Democrats think black people deserve. It also clearly shows the role Democrats feel black should have in this country.
I thought the results of their policies showed pure contempt for black people. You showed me how good we have it.
Obviously, I should reassess my opinion of Democratic policies in these blue states, counties, and cities. I mean, what's better than what we got here?
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
The red states, counties, and cities! Black folk there are doing just swimmingly!
The red states, counties, and cities! Black folk there are doing just swimmingly!
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
Do you acknowledge it?
No, they're both in a shit position. I acknowledge the situation of both while also acknowledging Democratic and Republican policies are leaving blacks worse off in the long run.The red states, counties, and cities! Black folk there are doing just swimmingly!
Do you acknowledge it?
Re: Lautenberg's son blasts 'show horse' Booker as family endorses Pallone
I acknowledge that I can take the best of both. It's not an either or.
I acknowledge that I don't have permanent affiliation with the political parties, just permanent interests.
Just so happens that today's republican party is not interested in my interests.
I acknowledge that I can take the best of both. It's not an either or.
I acknowledge that I don't have permanent affiliation with the political parties, just permanent interests.
Just so happens that today's republican party is not interested in my interests.
Cory Booker's campaign hit some bumps, but a Senate seat seems certain
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest...it-some-bumps-but-a-Senate-seat-seems-certain
Booker Bests Tea Party’s Lonegan in N.J. for Senate Seat
Booker Bests Tea Party’s Lonegan in N.J. for Senate Seat
By Terrence Dopp & Elise Young
Oct 16, 2013 8:36 PM CT
Newark Mayor Cory Booker beat the Tea Party-backed Republican Steven Lonegan in New Jersey’s special U.S. Senate election, after a race the candidates cast as a referendum on the partial federal government shutdown.
Booker, 44, topped Lonegan, 56 percent to 43 percent, with 58 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, which declared the Democrat the winner. He was elected to serve the remaining 15 months of the term of Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died in June at age 89.
As recently as August, Booker led in polls by more than 20 percentage points in the race for the seat held by Lautenberg, a five-term Democrat. Lonegan had narrowed the contest in closing weeks after calling Booker a champion of costly government, and accusing him of being more focused on the national spotlight than on New Jersey. Lonegan, 57, said fellow Republicans “showed guts’ by forcing a shutdown that started Oct. 1 after lawmakers couldn’t agree on a budget, and was embraced by the Tea Party, a limited-government group.
Following the close of voting, the state division of elections will review official results from each of New Jersey’s 21 county clerks and the Board of State Canvassers will certify the results on or before Nov. 13, said Donna Barber, the state’s manager of elections. She said the Senate will need to decide when the winner is seated.
New Jersey voters haven’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972. Booker, a darling of Wall Street executives and West Coast technology entrepreneurs, raised $11.5 million during the race, more than eight times Lonegan’s $1.36 million.
A Rhodes Scholar and Yale University-educated lawyer who moved to Newark in 1996, Booker spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention and helped lead its platform committee. He gained national attention last year for saving a neighbor from a fire and for living on food stamps for a week to show the difficulty of relying on the government-assistance program.
Booker, a prolific Twitter user with 1.4 million followers on the social media website, cast himself himself as a new kind of politician who would bring change to Washington. His campaign seized on Lonegan’s support for Republican politicians such as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz that he blamed for the shutdown.
His efforts to add development and reduce crime in New Jersey’s largest city lured investments from Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and hedge-fund managers including Bill Ackman and Leon Cooperman. Booker was endorsed by President Barack Obama, and several celebrities gave him financial backing and campaign assistance, including Oprah Winfrey and actress Eva Longoria.
Lonegan, who is legally blind, failed in bids for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998 and for governor in 2005 and 2009. From 1996 to 2008 he was mayor of Bogota, a Democratic-leaning borough of 8,000 people six miles (10 kilometers) west of Manhattan. He used the job as a platform for smaller government, successfully suing the state in 2003 to require voter approval of bond sales.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...a-party-s-lonegan-in-n-j-for-senate-seat.html
Booker Bests Tea Party’s Lonegan in N.J. for Senate Seat
By Terrence Dopp & Elise Young
Oct 16, 2013 8:36 PM CT
Newark Mayor Cory Booker beat the Tea Party-backed Republican Steven Lonegan in New Jersey’s special U.S. Senate election, after a race the candidates cast as a referendum on the partial federal government shutdown.
Booker, 44, topped Lonegan, 56 percent to 43 percent, with 58 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press, which declared the Democrat the winner. He was elected to serve the remaining 15 months of the term of Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died in June at age 89.
As recently as August, Booker led in polls by more than 20 percentage points in the race for the seat held by Lautenberg, a five-term Democrat. Lonegan had narrowed the contest in closing weeks after calling Booker a champion of costly government, and accusing him of being more focused on the national spotlight than on New Jersey. Lonegan, 57, said fellow Republicans “showed guts’ by forcing a shutdown that started Oct. 1 after lawmakers couldn’t agree on a budget, and was embraced by the Tea Party, a limited-government group.
Following the close of voting, the state division of elections will review official results from each of New Jersey’s 21 county clerks and the Board of State Canvassers will certify the results on or before Nov. 13, said Donna Barber, the state’s manager of elections. She said the Senate will need to decide when the winner is seated.
New Jersey voters haven’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since 1972. Booker, a darling of Wall Street executives and West Coast technology entrepreneurs, raised $11.5 million during the race, more than eight times Lonegan’s $1.36 million.
A Rhodes Scholar and Yale University-educated lawyer who moved to Newark in 1996, Booker spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention and helped lead its platform committee. He gained national attention last year for saving a neighbor from a fire and for living on food stamps for a week to show the difficulty of relying on the government-assistance program.
Booker, a prolific Twitter user with 1.4 million followers on the social media website, cast himself himself as a new kind of politician who would bring change to Washington. His campaign seized on Lonegan’s support for Republican politicians such as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz that he blamed for the shutdown.
His efforts to add development and reduce crime in New Jersey’s largest city lured investments from Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and hedge-fund managers including Bill Ackman and Leon Cooperman. Booker was endorsed by President Barack Obama, and several celebrities gave him financial backing and campaign assistance, including Oprah Winfrey and actress Eva Longoria.
Lonegan, who is legally blind, failed in bids for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1998 and for governor in 2005 and 2009. From 1996 to 2008 he was mayor of Bogota, a Democratic-leaning borough of 8,000 people six miles (10 kilometers) west of Manhattan. He used the job as a platform for smaller government, successfully suing the state in 2003 to require voter approval of bond sales.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...a-party-s-lonegan-in-n-j-for-senate-seat.html
Re: Booker Bests Tea Party’s Lonegan in N.J. for Senate Seat
I just realized what you people did to the thread's subject line. Que, aren't you old enough to see how tacky it is to phrase things that way?I think you're sad
Re: Booker Bests Tea Party’s Lonegan in N.J. for Senate Seat
If you tell me you actually give a shit, I'll take you at face value and define it.
Do you really care?
If you tell me you actually give a shit, I'll take you at face value and define it.
Re: Booker Bests Tea Party’s Lonegan in N.J. for Senate Seat
From left: Blanche K. Bruce, Frederick Douglass, Hiram Revels (LOC, J. Hoover, 1881)
Editor's note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series,
please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100
Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these "amazing facts" are
an homage.
The Introduction
Meet Hiram R. Revels
Dred Scott Redux
SOURCE
Cory Booker and the 1st Black Senators
C100 Amazing Facts About the Negro: Meet Hiram Revels,
who paved the way for men like Booker to serve
who paved the way for men like Booker to serve
From left: Blanche K. Bruce, Frederick Douglass, Hiram Revels (LOC, J. Hoover, 1881)
Editor's note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series,
please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100
Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these "amazing facts" are
an homage.
The Introduction
When the brilliant Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a Stanford honors student, Yale Law School graduate and a former Rhodes Scholar, is sworn in as New Jersey's next U.S. senator on Oct. 31 (a historical event that should be widely heralded as a triumph of vision and one candidate's unwavering and consistent moral commitment to public service), it will mark only the second time in history that two African Americans will be serving in the Senate at the same time. This milestone, remarkably, was only reached earlier this year after Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina elevated Rep. Tim Scott to Jim DeMint's old seat and Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts appointed his former chief of staff, William "Mo" Cowan, to fill the vacancy left by current Secretary of State John Kerry until a special election could be held in June.
While Sens. Cowan and Scott only had a few months together in office, Booker and Scott will share the same chamber (at least) through 2014 when both must run again -- Scott, for the first time, statewide. In both cases, Scott, a Tea Party favorite and the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction, has been matched up with a Northeastern Democrat, one who has already officiated same-sex weddings in his state. What a gesture it would be for them to sit together at President Obama's next State of the Union address in January. While their respective parties may continue to be divided over how best to represent the "1 percent" and the "99 percent," the Senate is now 2 percent black. In a nation that has twice elected a black man to its highest office, it is news at least worth noting -- and, yes, for many, celebrating.
That's right! It could -- and, as we'll see in next week's column, should -- have happened 138 years ago on March 5, 1875, two years before Reconstruction ended. This was when the Senate moved to swear in the (second) black man whom Mississippi had sent to Washington, Blanche K. Bruce, even as it continued refusing to seat the first from Louisiana, P.S.B. Pinchback, a Civil War veteran and former state governor who'd been haunting the halls of Congress for two long years waiting for an answer.
Before deciding on the fate of these two individual black men, however, the senators in power after the Civil War had to settle an even more fundamental question when it came to seating Revels in 1870: Was it too soon, according to the Constitution, for any black man to be legally entitled to serve?
Please join me this week and next as I journey back to Reconstruction days in search of Cory Booker's oldest "ancestor" in the Senate and of the true -- and fullest -- significance of the 2 percent glass ceiling he has helped Sen. Tim Scott break for the second time this year. With Election Day on deck, a week from Tuesday, it's the perfect time for us to recall how precious a right voting is, and how much those who went before sacrificed for us to exercise it.
While Sens. Cowan and Scott only had a few months together in office, Booker and Scott will share the same chamber (at least) through 2014 when both must run again -- Scott, for the first time, statewide. In both cases, Scott, a Tea Party favorite and the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction, has been matched up with a Northeastern Democrat, one who has already officiated same-sex weddings in his state. What a gesture it would be for them to sit together at President Obama's next State of the Union address in January. While their respective parties may continue to be divided over how best to represent the "1 percent" and the "99 percent," the Senate is now 2 percent black. In a nation that has twice elected a black man to its highest office, it is news at least worth noting -- and, yes, for many, celebrating.
That's right! It could -- and, as we'll see in next week's column, should -- have happened 138 years ago on March 5, 1875, two years before Reconstruction ended. This was when the Senate moved to swear in the (second) black man whom Mississippi had sent to Washington, Blanche K. Bruce, even as it continued refusing to seat the first from Louisiana, P.S.B. Pinchback, a Civil War veteran and former state governor who'd been haunting the halls of Congress for two long years waiting for an answer.
Before deciding on the fate of these two individual black men, however, the senators in power after the Civil War had to settle an even more fundamental question when it came to seating Revels in 1870: Was it too soon, according to the Constitution, for any black man to be legally entitled to serve?
Please join me this week and next as I journey back to Reconstruction days in search of Cory Booker's oldest "ancestor" in the Senate and of the true -- and fullest -- significance of the 2 percent glass ceiling he has helped Sen. Tim Scott break for the second time this year. With Election Day on deck, a week from Tuesday, it's the perfect time for us to recall how precious a right voting is, and how much those who went before sacrificed for us to exercise it.
Meet Hiram R. Revels
Article I, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution spells out the qualifications for becoming a senator by telling us who can't: "No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen."
In late February 1870, there was no question whether the first black senator-elect in American history -- and one of the first Mississippi had sent to Washington since the Civil War -- was old enough or resided in the Magnolia State. Hiram Rhodes Revels, 42 (at a time when the life expectancy of an average American man was mid-40s), had been born free to mixed-race parents in North Carolina in 1827, before even Andrew Jackson was president. After receiving seminary training in Indiana and Ohio, Revels had traveled the country as an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and eventually pastored churches in St. Louis and Baltimore. He had studied at Knox College in Illinois. He had helped organize and minister to black troops during the late rebellion. Following the emancipation, he had opened churches and schools for the freed people of Mississippi and served as an alderman and state senator. He impressed many political observers with his oratorical gifts and moderate temperament.
So, no, there was no question about Sen.-elect Revel's age or his residency -- or about the powerful new voting bloc behind him. As W.E.B. Du Bois detailed in his classic 1935 study, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, Mississippi already had a majority-black population before the Civil War; and, with its slaves now free and under the protection of federal troops, 60,137 blacks registered for the vote in 1867 compared to 46,636 whites.
Blacks also comprised the majority in 32 of Mississippi's counties, and in the state's first Reconstruction legislature, convened in 1870, they netted 40 seats, though, as Du Bois points out, based on their numbers, it should have been more. (Until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913, state legislatures, not voters, decided who would represent them in the U.S. Senate.) What Eric Foner has called "America's Unfinished Revolution" was just beginning, and the former slaves of the Deep South were on the verge of reinventing government -- they thought, forever.
In late February 1870, there was no question whether the first black senator-elect in American history -- and one of the first Mississippi had sent to Washington since the Civil War -- was old enough or resided in the Magnolia State. Hiram Rhodes Revels, 42 (at a time when the life expectancy of an average American man was mid-40s), had been born free to mixed-race parents in North Carolina in 1827, before even Andrew Jackson was president. After receiving seminary training in Indiana and Ohio, Revels had traveled the country as an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and eventually pastored churches in St. Louis and Baltimore. He had studied at Knox College in Illinois. He had helped organize and minister to black troops during the late rebellion. Following the emancipation, he had opened churches and schools for the freed people of Mississippi and served as an alderman and state senator. He impressed many political observers with his oratorical gifts and moderate temperament.
So, no, there was no question about Sen.-elect Revel's age or his residency -- or about the powerful new voting bloc behind him. As W.E.B. Du Bois detailed in his classic 1935 study, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880, Mississippi already had a majority-black population before the Civil War; and, with its slaves now free and under the protection of federal troops, 60,137 blacks registered for the vote in 1867 compared to 46,636 whites.
Blacks also comprised the majority in 32 of Mississippi's counties, and in the state's first Reconstruction legislature, convened in 1870, they netted 40 seats, though, as Du Bois points out, based on their numbers, it should have been more. (Until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913, state legislatures, not voters, decided who would represent them in the U.S. Senate.) What Eric Foner has called "America's Unfinished Revolution" was just beginning, and the former slaves of the Deep South were on the verge of reinventing government -- they thought, forever.
Dred Scott Redux
This was raw political power the Republican Party was eager to embrace and that Southern Democrats feared. (Remember, Abraham Lincoln had only been dead five years.) So by the time Revels reached the senate on Feb. 23, 1870 -- and so soon after Appomattox -- he was showered by applause from the gallery, but met resistance from the Democrats on the floor. Particularly galling to them was the fact that Revels was about to inhabit a seat like the one that their former colleague, Jefferson Davis, had resigned en route to becoming president of the Confederacy in 1861. When Davis was still in the Senate, the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) had still been good law, they knew, and it had gone out of its way to reject blacks' claims to U.S. citizenship -- the critical third test any incoming senator had to pass.
In staring down Revels, the Democrats' strategy wasn't to rake over his birth certificate (an absurd tactic left to our own time) but to proceed as though nothing had happened in between 1857 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. (Both of those measures had clarified blacks' status as citizens, blunting Dred Scott's force as precedent -- the 14th Amendment as a matter of constitutional law.) As a result, by the Democrats' calculus, Revels, despite having been born a free man in the South and having voted years before in Ohio, could only claim to have been a U.S. citizen for two -- and at most four -- years, well short of the Constitutional command of nine. It was a rule-based argument, as rigid as it was reactionary. It twisted the founders' original concerns over allowing foreign agents into the Senate into a bar on all native-born blacks until 1875 or 1877, thus buying the Democrats more time to regain their historical advantages in the South.
So, instead of Sen.-elect Revels taking the oath of office upon his arrival in Washington , he had to suffer two more days of debate among his potential colleagues over his credentials and the reach of Dred Scott. While the Democrats' defense was constitutionally based, as Richard Primus brilliantly recounts in his April 2006 Harvard Law Review article, "The Riddle of Hiram Revels" (pdf), there were occasional slips that indicated just what animus -- at least for some -- lurked behind it. "Outside the chamber," Primus writes, "Democratic newspapers set a vicious tone: the New York World decried the arrival of a 'lineal descendant of an ourang-otang in Congress' and added that Revels had 'hands resembling claws.' The discourse inside the chamber was almost equally pointed."
Primus continues, "Senator [Garrett] Davis [of Kentucky] asked rhetorically whether any of the Republicans present who claimed willingness to accept Revels as a colleague 'has made sedulous court to any one fair black swan, and offered to take her singing to the altar of Hymen.' " Can you imagine a senator using such suggestive sexual language on the Senate floor today? (OK, maybe on Twitter.)
Foolishly drawn into the debate, some of Revels' own supporters contorted themselves trying to work within the Democrats' framework. Notably, one Republican senator, George Williams of Oregon, staked his vote on Revels' mixed-race heritage (as Primus indicates, Revels was "called a quadroon, an octoroon, and a Croatan Indian as well as a negro" throughout his life). It was a material fact to Williams, perhaps because, as President Lincoln's former attorney general Edward Bates had signaled in an opinion during the Civil War, just one drop of European blood was technically enough to exempt a black man from Dred Scott's citizenship ban against African pure-bloods.
Fortunately for all future black elected officials (just think of the pernicious effects of such a rule, however short-lived, on those who could not claim any obvious white heritage), other Republicans in the caucus refused to play along. As Primus recalls, "Senator Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania [asked his colleagues,] 'What do I care which pre-ponderates? He [Revels] is a man [and] his race, when the country was in its peril, came to the rescue … I admit that it somewhat shocks my old prejudices, as it probably does the prejudices of many more here, that one of the despised race should come here to be my equal; but I look upon it as the act of God.' "
The more decisive act for Republicans, as Cameron's backhanded comments indicated, was the Civil War, which (hello!) in four years had claimed the lives of 750,000 Americans, rewriting the Constitution in blood. To Republicans, before the country had spoken through the Civil Rights Act or Reconstruction Amendments, Dred Scott had, effectively, been overturned by what Sen. James Nye of Nevada called "the mightiest uprising which the world has ever witnessed."
Charles Sumner, the radical Republican senator from Massachusetts, understood the costs of that uprising, having shed his own blood beneath the cane of Preston Brooks in one of the most violent episodes in the lead-up to the war -- right at his own Senate desk. And Sumner wasn't about to concede any ground to Dred Scott, which, to him, had been "orn a putrid corpse" as soon as it had left the late Chief Justice Taney's pen. "The time has passed for argument," Sumner thundered, as quoted in my book, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 . "Nothing more need be said … 'All men are created equal' says the great Declaration; and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality. For a long time in word only, it now becomes a deed. For a long time a promise only, it now becomes a consummated achievement."
A year before, Sen. George Hoar of Massachusetts called for a resolution to award Revels $4,847 in back pay for the time he had lost between his election as senator in Mississippi and his swearing-in. "Never since the days of the French Revolution, if even then, had the world witnessed such an upturning in political and social conditions," the New York Tribune recalled in reporting on the story. "It was then when the seat of Jefferson Davis, the flower of the Southern aristocracy … was taken by a negro that the people of the North and South fully realized what the war had brought about."
But for this very reason, Sen. James Blaine of Maine also observed, Revels' "presence, while demonstrating the extent to which the assertion of equal rights had been carried, served to increase and stimulate the Southern resistance to the whole system of Republican reconstruction." Slaves may have helped build the Capitol dome, but no amount of federal troops in the South during Reconstruction could convince enough senators they were under any special obligation to seat free black men below it -- not even just two, a situation they would confront four years after Revels left office.
See you back here next Monday, Nov. 4, Election Day eve in the United States, as we pick up in 1875 with the next black senator from Mississippi, Blanche K. Bruce, and the drama swirling around the possibility of seating his friend from Louisiana, P.S.B. Pinchback. In the meantime, look up your polling place and when you jot it down in your calendar, write the name Hiram Revels next to it. He crossed rivers, and whoever is on the ballot in your district on Nov. 5, so can we.
In staring down Revels, the Democrats' strategy wasn't to rake over his birth certificate (an absurd tactic left to our own time) but to proceed as though nothing had happened in between 1857 and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868. (Both of those measures had clarified blacks' status as citizens, blunting Dred Scott's force as precedent -- the 14th Amendment as a matter of constitutional law.) As a result, by the Democrats' calculus, Revels, despite having been born a free man in the South and having voted years before in Ohio, could only claim to have been a U.S. citizen for two -- and at most four -- years, well short of the Constitutional command of nine. It was a rule-based argument, as rigid as it was reactionary. It twisted the founders' original concerns over allowing foreign agents into the Senate into a bar on all native-born blacks until 1875 or 1877, thus buying the Democrats more time to regain their historical advantages in the South.
So, instead of Sen.-elect Revels taking the oath of office upon his arrival in Washington , he had to suffer two more days of debate among his potential colleagues over his credentials and the reach of Dred Scott. While the Democrats' defense was constitutionally based, as Richard Primus brilliantly recounts in his April 2006 Harvard Law Review article, "The Riddle of Hiram Revels" (pdf), there were occasional slips that indicated just what animus -- at least for some -- lurked behind it. "Outside the chamber," Primus writes, "Democratic newspapers set a vicious tone: the New York World decried the arrival of a 'lineal descendant of an ourang-otang in Congress' and added that Revels had 'hands resembling claws.' The discourse inside the chamber was almost equally pointed."
Primus continues, "Senator [Garrett] Davis [of Kentucky] asked rhetorically whether any of the Republicans present who claimed willingness to accept Revels as a colleague 'has made sedulous court to any one fair black swan, and offered to take her singing to the altar of Hymen.' " Can you imagine a senator using such suggestive sexual language on the Senate floor today? (OK, maybe on Twitter.)
Foolishly drawn into the debate, some of Revels' own supporters contorted themselves trying to work within the Democrats' framework. Notably, one Republican senator, George Williams of Oregon, staked his vote on Revels' mixed-race heritage (as Primus indicates, Revels was "called a quadroon, an octoroon, and a Croatan Indian as well as a negro" throughout his life). It was a material fact to Williams, perhaps because, as President Lincoln's former attorney general Edward Bates had signaled in an opinion during the Civil War, just one drop of European blood was technically enough to exempt a black man from Dred Scott's citizenship ban against African pure-bloods.
Fortunately for all future black elected officials (just think of the pernicious effects of such a rule, however short-lived, on those who could not claim any obvious white heritage), other Republicans in the caucus refused to play along. As Primus recalls, "Senator Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania [asked his colleagues,] 'What do I care which pre-ponderates? He [Revels] is a man [and] his race, when the country was in its peril, came to the rescue … I admit that it somewhat shocks my old prejudices, as it probably does the prejudices of many more here, that one of the despised race should come here to be my equal; but I look upon it as the act of God.' "
The more decisive act for Republicans, as Cameron's backhanded comments indicated, was the Civil War, which (hello!) in four years had claimed the lives of 750,000 Americans, rewriting the Constitution in blood. To Republicans, before the country had spoken through the Civil Rights Act or Reconstruction Amendments, Dred Scott had, effectively, been overturned by what Sen. James Nye of Nevada called "the mightiest uprising which the world has ever witnessed."
Charles Sumner, the radical Republican senator from Massachusetts, understood the costs of that uprising, having shed his own blood beneath the cane of Preston Brooks in one of the most violent episodes in the lead-up to the war -- right at his own Senate desk. And Sumner wasn't about to concede any ground to Dred Scott, which, to him, had been "orn a putrid corpse" as soon as it had left the late Chief Justice Taney's pen. "The time has passed for argument," Sumner thundered, as quoted in my book, Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008 . "Nothing more need be said … 'All men are created equal' says the great Declaration; and now a great act attests this verity. Today we make the Declaration a reality. For a long time in word only, it now becomes a deed. For a long time a promise only, it now becomes a consummated achievement."
A year before, Sen. George Hoar of Massachusetts called for a resolution to award Revels $4,847 in back pay for the time he had lost between his election as senator in Mississippi and his swearing-in. "Never since the days of the French Revolution, if even then, had the world witnessed such an upturning in political and social conditions," the New York Tribune recalled in reporting on the story. "It was then when the seat of Jefferson Davis, the flower of the Southern aristocracy … was taken by a negro that the people of the North and South fully realized what the war had brought about."
But for this very reason, Sen. James Blaine of Maine also observed, Revels' "presence, while demonstrating the extent to which the assertion of equal rights had been carried, served to increase and stimulate the Southern resistance to the whole system of Republican reconstruction." Slaves may have helped build the Capitol dome, but no amount of federal troops in the South during Reconstruction could convince enough senators they were under any special obligation to seat free black men below it -- not even just two, a situation they would confront four years after Revels left office.
See you back here next Monday, Nov. 4, Election Day eve in the United States, as we pick up in 1875 with the next black senator from Mississippi, Blanche K. Bruce, and the drama swirling around the possibility of seating his friend from Louisiana, P.S.B. Pinchback. In the meantime, look up your polling place and when you jot it down in your calendar, write the name Hiram Revels next to it. He crossed rivers, and whoever is on the ballot in your district on Nov. 5, so can we.
Tune in tomorrow night at 8 p.m. EDT for the second episode of professor Gates' new PBS series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, "The Age of Slavery" (1800-1860). To check local listings, and to learn more about the series, visit PBS.org. To order the entire series on DVD, or to purchase the companion book, visit shoppbs.org.
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