A Government of the People?
Why Ken Lewis’s Senate Campaign Matters
by Mark Anthony Neal
Political pundits continue to discuss contemporary electoral politics along largely symbolic fault-lines—as if every voter‘s profile can be summed up as Left, Right or Independent. Less discussed in the fact that the most influential and visible political body in this country is largely out-of-sync with the demographic groups it ostensibly represents.
Though non-Hispanic Whites make up less than 70% percent of the population in the United States, the US Senate is 96% White. New Jersey’s Bob Menendez (Latino), Hawaii’s Daniel Akaka (the first Chinese-American elected to the Senate) and Dan Inouye (Japanese-American), and Roland Burris (African-American), who was appointed amidst controversy to replace Barack Obama, are the faces of Senate’s version of racial diversity. Additionally, while there are several prominent women in the Senate including Olympia Snowe and Diane Feinstein, there are only 14 women that currently serve in the Senate.
In the second decade of the 21st century and thirty-years from the realization of predictions that non-Hispanic Whites will no longer be the majority in this country, the United States Senate is overwhelmingly White and male. Ironically as many continue to question whether President Barack Obama, the first Black President and recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer, the high court’s first Latino appointee, can represent all of country’s citizens, few seemed compelled to raise the same question with regards to the US Senate.
How different might deliberations about health care reform, immigration, the policing of Wall Street and support for public education, for example, have been had they occurred within a body that better reflected the population in the United States?
The historical lack of diversity in the Senate, in comparison with the Supreme Court , another elite political body, is striking. The number of African-Americans who have served on the Supreme Court (2) is only two less than the number of African-Americans who have been elected or appointed to the Senate since Reconstruction. With the exception of Senator Edward Brooke, who was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in 1966, the remaining three African Americans who have served in the Senate since Reconstruction were all appointed or elected from the state of Illinois. On a statistical level, an African American is more likely to be elected President, than they are to be elected to the Senate.
This is why Ken Lewis’s Senate campaign in North Carolina is so vital to America’s democratic vision. Lewis’s candidacy represents an historical opportunity to continue to bring diversity to the political bodies that represent the nation as a whole. Indeed Lewis’s campaign represents an opportunity for North Carolina voters to put aside the memories of the bitter Senate campaigns of 1990 and 1996, that pitted Jessie Helms against Harvey Gantt, the first African-American elected Mayor of Charlotte, NC. In the midst of a tight race in 1990, Helms resorted to race-baiting tactics by running the infamous “Hands” commercial which depicted a pair of White hands crumpling a job rejection letter, as a voice-over suggest that it was the fault of racial quotas in hiring practices.
Barack Obama’s victory in North Carolina during the 2008 Presidential election suggest that North Carolina voters have gotten past some of the racial divides of the past. That Ken Lewis race has not been an issue with regards to his qualifications is a testament to the brave new political world that North Carolina has helped to bring about. That Ken Lewis’s campaign has been taken seriously is a testament to the diversity that we all must value as the country moves forward.
