By Lucius Gantt
Recent reports say that national, statewide and local offices of the Democratic Party spend less than three percent of billions of dollars in campaign funds with businesses owned by the party’s most loyal base of voters.
Ho hum!
To Gantt Report readers, this is old news, decades old. The twist is that I don’t blame the Democratic Party like your favorite TV and radio show hosts do. In the past, yes, but today I blame the politically ignorant, hat-in-hand, handkerchief-wearing, boot-licking lackeys who have known for years what is going on and have been scared to open their mouths and say anything for fear it would upset Democratic politicians and Democratic Party leaders.
Now journalist Roland Martin and others have been ranting and raving about what a bad thing the under-utilization of black political professionals is. No disrespect to my media brother but we should be even more upset with the Toms, Sambos and Jemimas who donate thousands of dollars to Democratic causes and don’t earmark the contributions or expressly state what they want money contributed by black party supporters to be used for.
Money raised and contributed by black individuals and black groups to the Democratic and the Republican parties could be earmarked to be spent on black-owned media, with black political researchers, with black direct mailers, with black pollsters, with black campaign consultants, with black call centers, with black-owned printing companies, with black sign printers and with other black professionals.
Everybody in the game knows that organized labor groups demand that politicians receiving union contributions use “union” print shops. So, why are modern-day Jezebels and Fiddlers afraid to tell political parties to spend the money that black people donate with professional black vendors? I expect white Democrats to spend political money with white vendors. I expect Jewish politicians and Cuban politicians to spend money with Jews and Cubans.
I don’t have to tell you whom the African-American politicians and elected officials that you love and you contribute money to spend most of their campaign dollars with. Look at their campaign expense reports and you tell me the name of the black political vendors getting paid by the elected officials that you love.
And the big man that you love, the black man who is the head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the leader of the free world, the commander-in-chief and the man who can control hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending spends more money with white political consultants and vendors than almost any other black political figure in the world.
And you want to be mad at some faceless, nebulous “Democratic Party.”
Nobody in politics is spending money with black political professionals because black voters and black businesses don’t make politicians spend money with black professionals.
Henry Crespo, head of the Democratic Black Caucus of Florida (DBCF), is trying to put together a fundraising political group that can fund political efforts in Florida’s black communities. All of the state’s black trial lawyers, black doctors, black contractors, black engineers and others who make political contributions should give to groups like this caucus before giving to the organizations that refuse to patronize us.
Unions like the Longshoremen and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME)should finance groups like the DBCF before they dump tons of workers’ union dues on contributions to political bigots who won’t use black vendors under any circumstances.The Gantt Report told you 20 years ago that politicians you love hate to spend money with you and now that radio comedians are cracking jokes about the disparity in spending, you want to be upset.
When you go to political forums at black churches and other places, you should demand to know how many black employees and how many black vendors does the politician have before you contribute a dime to his or her campaign and certainly well before you vote for the closet klansman who masquerades as your political savior.
One last thing. Democratic consultants who make thousands and millions of dollars each political cycle, even though Democratic candidates keep losing and losing, should be fired and replaced by black consultants any way.
Lucius Gantt, a political consultant based in Tallahassee, is author of the book Beast Too: Dead Man Writing which is available at Amazon.com. You can like The Gantt Report page on Facebook and contact Gantt at www.allworldconsultants.net
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