It's not just Nigeria...sad

[size=13pt]Tribal politics in New York[/size]
[size=14pt]Herd mentality[/size]
Jun 20th 2014, 19:30 by Lexington | NEW YORK
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/06/tribal-politics-new-york



REGISTERING newly-minted American citizens to vote is a fine and worthy activity. In a nation of immigrants, it is good for politicians to hear the voices of fresh arrivals so that they have a sense of the hopes and aspirations of constituents. And in a melting-pot democracy, different communities understandably stick together as voter blocks, at least for a little while. So by rights Lexington should have found it uplifting to spend time this week watching canvassers from Dominicanos USA, a campaign group, as they looked for Dominican-American voters in Upper Manhattan and reminded them to cast ballots in a Democratic primary election on June 24th. After all the primary, in New York’s 13th congressional district, has a chance of going down in modern political history.

At stake is the seat held by Charles Rangel (pictured), one of the last Lions of Harlem—Democratic barons who turned the upper reaches of Manhattan island into a cradle of black political power. In his 43 years in Congress Mr Rangel navigated the civil-rights era and survived dark decades of urban decay, crime and depopulation. The 84-year old incumbent even maintained his clout after scandals engulfed him in 2010, leading to his formal censure by Congress for such lapses as failing to pay all his taxes (an awkward mis-step for the then-chairman of the House’s tax-writing committee). He kept his power even after migration trends and the redrawing of his district boundaries left him representing a district that was 55% Hispanic. His core supporters stood by him even as leaders of the post-racial, coalition-building wing of the Democratic Party deserted him (it was time for Mr Rangel to retire “with dignity”, President Barack Obama said back in 2010). The 22-term congressman clung on even as Harlem gentrified, with young white and black hipsters crowding onto café terraces on Lenox Avenue and tourists flooding the soul-food restaurants. But the Rangel era may be coming to an end.

In next Tuesday’s Democratic primary Mr Rangel will be fighting for his political life. He faces a fresh challenge from a Dominican-born state senator, Adriano Espaillat who came only 1,100 votes shy of defeating him in a primary in 2012. If Mr Espaillat does win the Democratic nomination for this district, stand by for countless headlines about the rising Latino electorate and the decline of black political power. My column in the print edition this week ponders some broad national lessons from the primary race. Here I’d like to examine a narrower aspect of the contest: the unblushing use of race and ethnicity as political tools.

A low point came during a debate on June 6th when Mr Rangel mocked his 59-year old rival (“this young fellow”), asking what he had done “besides saying he’s a Dominican”. Though Mr Espaillat has spent this primary decrying racial divisions and joking that his opponents want to replay “West Side Story”, he is not above political tribalism. In 2012 his campaign issued a shameful flyer accusing a Dominican-American politician of betraying “our community” for endorsing Mr Rangel. That same year he grumbled that, for the sake of political peace, a safely Hispanic congressional district should have been drawn in upper Manhattan, as the new make-up of Mr Rangel’s seat laid the ground-work for “20 years of nuclear political war”.

If elected, Mr Espaillat would be the first Dominican-American in Congress. And on the sun-baked streets of the 13th district, that is a big deal. Your reporter caught up with Dominicanos USA at their temporary headquarters in a community college in the Bronx. Paid canvassers in campaign T-shirts worked a phone bank. Others readied themselves with maps and address lists for an evening of geting out the vote. It looked and felt like any election campaign, except for one big difference: the group has no candidate. Funded by wealthy Dominican business leaders including the family behind the Vicini group, a big sugar producer, Dominicanos USA aims to increase the clout of the Dominican-American community, which now boasts more than 300,000 eligible voters in the state of New York alone. Canvassers do not urge people to vote for a party, let alone a named candidate. Instead they said, simply: “It’s time for the Dominican voice to be heard.”

What distinctive policies might Dominican-American voices demand, Lexington asked organisers? The answers were vague, involving jobs, affordable housing, better schools and good things that all voters want. Immigration reform came up: a complicated topic among New York Hispanics. (Puerto Ricans have the vote automatically, as their island is American territory. Cubans have enjoyed special paths to citizenship since the cold war.)

Jorge Mursuli, a Cuban-American political consultant from Miami hired as the national project director of Dominicanos USA, cast his work as part of a broader progressive push to awaken Latino voters. The Dominican population “isn’t large enough to change American politics," he explained. "But if Dominicans and Puerto Ricans and Cubans get together to do their share, that will bring the sleeping giant to life.”

The group spent large sums tracking down immigrants from the Dominican Republic, using a blend of data-mining and instinct to find and register more than 21,000 voters. Your reporter watched a team captain, Paulina Mercado, as she worked streets of large pre-war apartment buildings around 135th Street and Broadway. Since November Ms Mercado has personally registered more than 600 voters. She and her colleagues found them on shopping streets, outside churches and at school gates, and in the parks where Little League baseball games are played (Dominican parents like to watch baseball). Some were signed up as they emerged as new citizens from naturalisation ceremonies, others had been in the country five or six years. Several needed mini-civics lessons before they could be persuaded to register ahead of the congressional primary, as they were only interested in presidential elections. “We tell them that if the House of Representatives does not agree the government cannot do anything, even if the president says yes,” she recalled.

In theory, the group will help citizens of any nationality register to vote. But tramping the streets on a hot summer night, skirting children playing soccer, grandmothers in folding chairs and young men grilling on curb-side barbecues, Ms Mercado was intensely focussed in her search for Dominicans, seeking out at most one or two voters per building. This was time-consuming stuff. Time and again she climbed worn marble stairs to knock on heavy steel security doors, with no result other than to provoke barks from dogs, and sharp stares from neighbours.

“Your Vote is Power” read the bilingual leaflet she left on the door of each registered Dominican. The statement is hardly shocking: any interest group could borrow it, from the Sierra Club to the National Rifle Association. And Ms Mercado was endlessly patient with a reporter tagging along on a busy evening, pestering her with questions in rusty Spanish. But still, this canvassing outing left Lexington feeling oddly gloomy. In 2014 there is something dispiriting about voters being formed into ethnic blocks with such precision.

NRA members or Sierra Club activists share political ideas and ideologies. Ethnicity is not an idea. Nationality is not an ideology. Mr Obama himself won office in part on a promise to move beyond the politics of tribal loyalty and division. Interviewed in 2000, during a failed attempt to win a Democratic primary for a Chicago congressional district, Mr Obama pushed back against grumbling that he was “insufficiently black” in his loyalties and worldview (he was trying to oust an incumbent who had once belonged to the Black Panthers). Building broad coalitions is the way to get things done in Congress, the young canddiate told a Chicago reporter: “We have more in common with the Latino community, the white community, than we have differences, and you have to work with them just from a practical political perspective.”

Mr Obama lost that 2000 race but later inspired a country with appeals to post-racial pragmatism. Yet as his time in the White House nears its end, the fight for New York’s 13th congressional district suggests that—in one of the safest Democratic seats in the country—Mr Obama’s brand of politics has shallow roots. (Sadly in Nigeria too)

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