Keeping black voters is Clinton’s challenge

YAZOO CITY, Miss. – Catherine Cowans is a black Barack Obama supporter who is disappointed by the rival Clinton campaign’s recent attacks on her candidate.

With all the dirt that’s been flung at Hillary Rodham Clinton over the years, Cowans said, “She shouldn’t really attack him.” But Cowans doesn’t think that Clinton’s jabs add up to an irredeemable sin. If Clinton becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, the 48-year-old hairdresser said, she will vote for her.

“I’m not angry at her,” Cowans said recently during a lull at her beauty salon in this sleepy Delta city. “I still like Hillary.”

Clinton’s newfound pugnacity may have helped her win primary contests last week in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, but as a long-term strategy it carries an inherent risk: By aggressively attacking Obama, who is so widely embraced by the black electorate, Clinton could deplete her own deep reservoir of popularity among black voters – a key source of her strength as a national political figure.

As Mississippi prepares for its first consequential Democratic primary in years today, a number of black Obama supporters said that Clinton has not yet crossed a line with her attacks.

Apparently she has goodwill to spare.

John Bender, a pro-Obama voter from Indianola, has been watching in recent weeks as the Clinton camp questioned Obama’s experience, highlighted his connections to indicted fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, and allegedly circulated a photo of the Illinois senator in Somali tribal dress.

But Bender, 48, chalked that up to the Clintons – the candidate and her husband, the former president – being the Clintons: aggressive, competitive, tough. In fact, he said, he was thankful Hillary Clinton was toughening Obama up. He figures the Republicans will be even less cordial if Obama makes it to the general election.

“A weak man can’t make it,” he said.

Obama’s return fire has included a call for Clinton to release her tax returns, but he also had a counterattack customized for Mississippi. Last week, his campaign dug up comments Clinton made in October in which she disparaged the state as being backward for failing to elect female lawmakers.

In the eyes of Mississippi’s blacks, who make up more than half of the state’s Democratic voters, it all amounts to an uncomfortable family feud between two well-liked candidates.

A number of voters here said they strongly favored seeing Clinton and Obama team up in November, regardless of who receives the nomination. State Rep. Earle S. Banks, a black who supports Obama, said the Illinois senator’s presence on the presidential ticket could spur dramatic increases in black turnout. And that, he said, could put Mississippi in the Democratic column for the first time since 1976, when it went to Jimmy Carter.

A tour of the Delta region last week found that Clinton maintains fervent support among blacks.

Tamika Hart, who owns a women’s clothing store in Indianola, said she recently had a health scare while she was uninsured. That converted her to Clinton, who is a longtime advocate for universal health care. But Hart, 27, said she felt some remorse that she’d be voting against Obama.

“I just wish he wasn’t running against her,” she said.

In Yazoo City, Burger King worker Marlon Anderson, 26, said he wasn’t so impressed with the idea of electing the first black president. He said he and his friends in this struggling city didn’t have many good jobs to choose from. And, he said, the Clintons proved their worth when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

“Things were way better than now,” he said.

But it is Obama who is considered the favorite here: Recent polls have him leading Clinton by six to 24 points.

Indeed, during the lunch rush Thursday at Fannie’s Cafe – a downtown soul food joint – it was difficult to find a black Clinton voter.

All of the Obama backers interviewed said they would get behind Clinton if she won the nomination.

“Sure I would,” said Edward Jones, a tire-shop worker who called Clinton’s tactics “dirty.” “I think we’ve got the best Democratic candidates we’ve ever had this year.”