Campaigning Differently Among Blacks and Whites – Then and Now

Watching Virginia Democratic Party Governor Ralph Northam twist in the wind becomes more interesting when one considers the following from Channel 7 against two campaign pieces for his gubernatorial campaign:

Northam spent years actively courting the black community in the lead up to his 2017 gubernatorial run, building relationships that helped him win both the primary and the general election. He’s a member of a predominantly black church on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, where he grew up.

“It’s a matter of relationships and trust. That’s not something that you build overnight,” Northam told the AP during a 2017 campaign stop while describing his relationship with the black community.

Now take a look at these almost identical campaign palm cards Northam used which I found on “American Thinker:”

The palm card on the left was undoubtedly distributed in black and liberal areas, while the other one probably went to rural areas with few blacks and whites perceived to be racists.  Truly a “separate, but equal” campaign.


Lest I be accused of only pinning the tail on the Democratic donkey, let me tell you what happened when I and other Young Republicans were campaigning for Republican candidate for Governor Jim Rhodes while attending Oberlin College in 1962.

Can’t remember if it was Elyria or Loraine where a local GOP functionary dropped us off in what was a “mixed” tree-lined middle class neighborhood.

By that, the campaign worker meant that it was composed of families with one spouse white and the other black.

We were given two different newspapers printed by a black Pennsylvania publisher to distribute.

If the white spouse answered the door we were to give them one version and, if the black spouse answered the door, the other version.

Then the guy drove off, saying he would pick us up at the other end of the street.

This was the most disturbing campaigning I ever did.

Oberlin College was the first college to admit blacks (women, too).

Back then, black students were just another a different color. If there was any discrimination, I surely did not see it.

The blacks did not segregate themselves in the campus gathering place.

When I returned for Homecoming in the fall of 1965, they did.

A complete change of culture, not for the better.


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