Artur Davis - Eric Schultz / The Huntsville Times

Les Payne

June 7, 2010

When pondering the recent defeat of Artur Davis, I puzzle not so much over the politics of my home-state, as over the compromise of this Democrat vying to become the first black governor of Alabama.

Didn’t Davis learn anything from Barack Obama; or Harvard, even? What about Percy Sutton?

In addition to showing black candidates how to win, generally, Obama blazed a specific, Democratic trail for his fellow Harvard alum to win on in Alabama. Blacks stampeding to the polls constituted 51- percent of the ’08 primary voters when Obama smashed Hillary Clinton there.

With the nomination his for the running, Davis turned his back on this base constituency and spit over his shoulder into their eyes. Ignoring even his fellow black legislators, the four-term congressman refused to attend their political functions while chasing longingly after every such white gathering not burning a cross in a cornfield at midnight.

And in a bold, public turning of his coat, Rep. Davis tauntingly voted against Obama’s national health care bill. Already local, black politicians had smelled enough. The Davis stench drove Birmingham’s first black mayor, Richard Arrington, for example, to endorse the little-known, white, Agriculture Commissioner, proving yet again that African-Americans, as others, vote their interest; though most often, as with Arrington, they have to hold their nose and settle for their near-interest.

As the world now knows, Davis, the odd-on favorite to romp away with his party’s nomination and even to compete in Nov. against the Republican for the state house—was crushed 62-38 percent in the Democratic primary.

Davis has been considered a member of that new and winning generation of Ivy-league trained black politicians that include Obama and Corey Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J.. Not surprisingly, each candidate tasted bitter defeat at the polls before President Obama laid down the rules for black American candidates, rules that Davis, the Harvard-trained lawyer, flatly refused to follow down in Alabama.

The compromise demands of politics, the Obama rules state, do not permit the African-American candidate to forsake the black community in chasing after white votes. Doing the math, Obama strategists figured that, as with Clinton in ’92 and again in ’96, he could win with a minority white vote—provided he excited black and other voters with the hope of not forsaking them yet again.

Obama won with 43-percent of the white vote and given his ’08 victory margin might have won with less than 40-percent, depending on how these votes were situated regionally. With the demographics of Alabama, Davis could possibly have won the general election in November with 33-percent of the white vote—provided, like Obama, he excited black voters into a historic turnout for him at the polls.

Instead, he panicked and chased single-mindedly after the white vote. In this he recalled not Obama in ’08, but Percy Sutton in 1977. Running for mayor of New York City that year, Sutton initiated his campaign office not in Harlem, his home base, but in white, suburban Queens.

The symbolic abandonment of his base was made real as candidate Sutton, hat in hand, chased hopelessly after the white vote. When someone suggested that his beard made the fair-skinned African-American look Arab, for example, Sutton promptly shaved it away. The abandonment complete, blacks chilled on Sutton, as they did on Davis; and the defeat was sad, sealed and delivered.

And now, just when Harvard was getting over its reputation as spoiling more Negroes than are ruined by bad whiskey—along comes Artur Davis.