GOP Must Do More To Court Minorities, Says Steele

By Mario Trujillo

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said Monday that the GOP will be irrelevant in five years unless it starts reaching out more agressively to minority voters.

Steele, along with longtime Democratic strategist and current interim Democratic National Committee Chairman Donna Brazile, spoke about the mingling between race and politics at an event sponsored by the Aspen Institute at the Newseum in Washington, D.C..

“The last time a significant number of African Americans voted for a Republican president was 1956, Dwight Eisenhower,” Steele said. “That is a heck of a long time to be out in the wilderness politically with a group of Americans whose interest you should have at heart.”

Steele, who lost his reelection battle back in January to Reince Priebus, discussed his struggle as an outsider within the party, and criticizing his fellow Republicans for not being open to new ideas to court the minority community. 2010 census data revealed that the nation’s minority population, especially in areas of the South and West, has increased.

Despite the fact that Republicans were outgained by Democrats in terms of minority votes in both 2008 and 2010, Steele’s loss had more to do with his questionable management of the RNC’s public image.

Brazile, on the other hand, said that years of gerrymandering minority districts has yielded an increase of African-Americans in the House, but has also prevented some from ascending higher than that.

Using North Carolina as an example, Brazile said it is hard for congressmen from largely black districts to run statewide because of the perception that they have only minority interests in mind. Currently, 44 U.S. Representatives are African-American. However, there are zero in the Senate, where the last African-American to hold office, Roland Burris (D-Ill.), was replaced by Republican Mark Kirk last November.