Report from the Front: On the Ground in South Carolina: Superstar
does a superstar equal a super vote?
2008-01-24
By Adrienne P. Samuels, senior writer
Columbia, S.C. – There comes a time in every voter’s life when they must choose.
Choose between Maya Angelou or Chris Tucker. Choose between Kerry Washington or Bob Johnson.
This decision isn’t about the president! Heck no. It’s about the superstars and who managed to snag whom into their election coffers. Or is it?
Angelou and Johnson are stumping for presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton. Angelou’s regal voice in support of Clinton takes over the local airwaves during the lunchtime hour. Washington and Tucker aren’t doing the radio thing, they’re just showing up to colleges, asking bright-faced students to cast a vote for Sen. Barack Obama.
Will this superstar stumping make a difference? Well, residents say, yes and no.
For the undecided voter new to the game, it certainly helps that Usher stopped through this week at South Carolina State University, a historically Black college in Orangeburg, S.C. There, he pumped up his black power fist in the name of Obama. And for oldheads who are trying to keep up with the Joneses, other Obama endorsements from the South Carolina Civil Rights oldguard may make a difference as well.
But who has the energy to keep up with who’s stumpin’ who?
“I need more of a reason as to why and who I’m voting for,” sniffed Shauntia Gregory, 19, a student at Benedict College, an HCBU near downtown Columbia. Both Tucker and Washington appeared on campus earlier this week, making many students very happy and very starstruck. Gregory wasn’t one of them. “I’m my own person. Everybody is their own person. You’re voting for yourself, not the superstar.”
South Carolina Media Group publisher Isaac Washington is endorsing Obama as well. Washington’s Black News South Carolina newspapers are distributed all over the state, and Washington’s circulation of about 45,000 plus nearly solo Black publisher status in the region means he has a pretty firm monopoly over anything that the Black press says here in South Carolina.
Interestingly, though a Republican in the past, Washington today is an Independent and has plans to announce the paper’s endorsement of Obama. (“Back then I was voting for the man instead of the party…”) Last week’s edition featured a full page color ad paid for by the Obama campaign. And Washington, also a deacon at the ever politically popular Zion Baptist Church and a man who was once arrested for fighting for Black rights, has no qualms saying he supports Obama financially and had no problem doing so prior to the paper’s endorsement.
Isn’t that a fairness issue? Nope, he says.
Washington, for one, aint buying Clinton’s assertion that her time as a White House wife means she’s got presidential experience. And now that some media are reporting that Clinton has “abandoned” South Carolina so she could focus on Super Duper Tuesday states such as California, it would seem that perhaps she is adding fuel to the fire. Of course, the official word is that Clinton has abandoned nothing. She’ll be back in the South before week’s end. (Though analysts do say that clinching a win in California – a state with a crapload of democratic delegates - will ultimately mean more once the candidates get to the nitty gritty of the Democratic National Convention over Labor Day weekend.)
Edwards has not taken out an ad in the Black News, according to Washington. And students say that they haven’t heard much of him outside of the debates. Yet, they like the man, saying that he’s genuine and they wouldn’t mind voting for him.
University of South Carolina professor Cleveland Sellers says that each superstar “surrogate” is designed to speak to a certain segment of the population. Examining each candidate’s surrogate gives you a key into their intended voting block, he says.
“Oprah brought in a significant group , a cross section of women and whites,” says Sellers, also a Civil Rights-era hero. He also supports Obama. “Bob Johnson? I’m not sure who that brings in or who comes with an Andy Young or a John Lewis. In South Carolina they don’t have the same kind of bounce.”
Sellers adds: “If you bring in an Usher, you bring in the bounce and bring in a young, aspiring student.”
It’s no secret that part of Obama’s grassroots plan is to harness the power of the young adult vote (age 18 to 30), a sizable part of the population not yet old enough to be so jaded by politics that they won’t vote. Thus, it makes sense that Obama is harnessing the students – both Black and White. Some 28,000 new voters are now registered in South Carolina and many say it’s the students that led that charge, especially on campuses like historically black Benedict, which hosts a polling place.
The new strategy is to get oft-busy students to vote early. That means that, starting today, the students will have a shuttle to take other students down to an early polling place. No time like the present.
And no proof that the students will actually vote for Obama, not that this bothers Antoine Thaxton, wearing a backward As hat and three Obama stickers, and clearly one of the popular students. Perhaps that popular thing is an insidious part of the grassroots program as well.
“We’re just getting the word out,” says the 21-year-old from Warner Robbins, Ga. “The rest is on them.”
Adrienne P. Samuels is senior staff writer for EBONY magazine.