There are a lot of "themes" to this election. The year of the Republican woman. The Tea Party vs. the elitists. The conservative grassroots vs. the establishment Republicans. Small government conservatives vs. big government Democrats. The American people vs. liberalism. However, there's one mini-trend that has been largely overlooked: There were a surprising number of black Republican candidates running this year. Initially, there were 32 candidates in the hunt, which was the largest field of black Republicans running for the House since Reconstruction. However, many of those candidates lost their primaries and so now we're down to 14 candidates.
Still, this wasn't supposed to happen. After all, we have the first black President in the White House and he's a Democrat. Moreover, he has a 90% approval rating with black Americans and there doesn't seem to be a Democrat in this country who can string together more than 4-5 sentences at a time without claiming Republicans hate black Americans. Nevertheless, we're about to see the first black Republicans in the House since J.C. Watts retired back in 2003.
That's no small matter and if Republicans are smart, they'll keep building on that momentum. Colin Powell and Condi Rice rose to prominence under the Bush administration. Pundits like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Star Parker, and Larry Elder have made a name for themselves in the conservative movement. Back in 2006, rather famously, we had Lynn Swann, Michael Steele, and Ken Blackwell running for office. Now, we've got Michael Steele as the RNC Chair and we have more black Republicans about to be elected to Congress.
That's one of the reasons the cries of "racism" no longer work and it's also helping to give the GOP its best chance to reach black Americans in a generation. If we could get to the point where even a third of black Americans were regularly voting Republican, which is much more plausible than you might think, we could start to shift the country's political landscape back to the Right. Of course, to make that happen, we're going to need more visible black leaders in the Republican Party. Sending Tim Scott, Allen West, and Ryan Frazier to Congress would be a good start on that effort.
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Tim Scott: Scott, who is the first black Republican elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives since Reconstruction, is conservative, charismatic, and a deft politician. He fits right in with other South Carolina conservative stars like Jim DeMint and Nikki Haley. Happily, after coming out on top in a nine candidate primary, Scott is on track to easily be elected in his conservative S.C. district. That guarantees that he will be the first black Republican for South Carolina to head to Congress since 1901.
Allen West: Allen West is a charismatic conservative who served with distinction in the military and now he's hoping to do the same in Congress. To get there, he must beat one of the most liberal members of the House, Ron Klein (He has a lifetime ACU rating of 1), in a +4 Democratic district. The polls have consistently shown this to be a tightly knotted race and it looks like it's going to remain that way all the way down to the wire.
Ryan Frazier: Frazier is a well funded, fiscally conservative, anti-amnesty candidate who says that repealing Obamacare must be the "top priority of the incoming Congress." He's up against ultra-left-winger Ed Perlmutter in a district that leans Democratic by just a couple of points. The race hasn't been publicly polled in a month and a half, but the last poll showed Frazier and Perlmutter knotted up well below the 50% mark. That means Frazier has an excellent chance to pull this race out and make a little history.
So, folks, if you're looking for some key races to watch down the home stretch, Tim Scott, Allen West and Ryan Frazier are names you need to know.
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