ORLANDO — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Saturday that his Republican opponent, John McCain, is running a cynical - but not racist - campaign.

“In no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist,” Obama said. “I think they’re cynical. I think they want to distract people from talking about the real issues.”

Obama tried to focus his two-day, five-city swing through Florida on economic issues - he called on Congress to issue immediately another round of tax rebates that he had suggested for next year - but the campaign repeatedly faced questions about accusations from McCain that the Illinois senator is “playing the race card.”

McCain’s campaign had said that Obama used race Wednesday when he said Republicans would try to scare voters by pointing out that Obama “doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.”

Obama was more direct during a Jacksonville fund-raiser in June, when he told supporters, “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me (by saying), ‘He’s young and inexperienced, and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’”

Full story…

If Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama want to snag the young Hispanic vote, they might have to talk more about the Iraq war.

More than half of young Latinos registered to vote said the war was the most important issue, showed a poll taken by Democracia U.S.A., a nonpartisan group. The survey did not ask whether they supported or opposed the war.

The economy came in second as 42 percent of the 18-to-29-year-olds polled said that was the central issue for them.

The war is most important to a majority because there is a growing population of Hispanics serving in Iraq.

Full story…

Racial disparity will remain an issue in America, regardless of whether Barack Obama is elected as the nation’s first black president, the chairman of the NAACP told the organization’s national convention Sunday night.Julian Bond, a veteran civil rights leader, said Obama’s candidacy doesn’t “herald a post-civil rights America, any more than his victory in November will mean that race as an issue has been vanquished in America.”

But he drew loud applause when he said the country, and “all of us here,” are taking pride in the success in this year’s campaign by a candidate who couldn’t have stayed in some cities’ hotels a few decades ago.

“We know that Obama’s electoral success — even if he should win the ultimate prize — won’t signal an end to racial discrimination, but it does mark the high point of an interracial movement that dates back to the Underground Railroad,” Bond said, referring to Cincinnati’s historical role in helping fleeing slaves reach freedom.

Obama plans to address the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s convention Monday night, and Republican presidential candidate John McCain plans to speak Wednesday.

Full story…

Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain both courted America’s 40 million-strong Hispanic community this week in their struggle for the White House, but Obama is clearly winning.Obama and McCain this week both addressed the 79th convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens. Last week McCain, R-Ariz., took a high-profile trip to Mexico and Colombia to boost his credentials with Latin voters. He also is trying to woo middle-class Hispanics with a commitment to maintaining President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

However, Obama, D-Ill., is succeeding where the Rev. Jesse Jackson failed 24 years ago in forging a genuine “Rainbow Coalition” of black, white and Hispanic voters that could carry him into the White House. Even in his long primary contest with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., he showed unexpected strength among younger Hispanic voters, and now he is winning over older ones as well.

In a hard-fought presidential race where polls show the two crucial swing states of Ohio and Missouri are still too close to call, the Hispanic vote looks to be crucial. They will be the crucial factor in determining the outcome in New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and, most of all, Florida, whose Electoral College votes put Bush in for the first of his two terms in 2000.

Full story…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama’s political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports.

Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools?

“The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist,” said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to end what he and others consider policies of reverse discrimination. “That rationale is undercut in a major way when you look at the success of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama.” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York battled Obama to the end of the Democratic primary process.

Other critics of affirmative action agree. “Obama is further evidence that the great majority of Americans reject discrimination, reject prejudice,” said Todd F. Gaziano, a scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Not so fast, say supporters of affirmative action. Just because Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and other minorities have reached the top of their professions does not mean that ordinary blacks, Latinos or women are free from day-to-day biases that deny them equal access to top schools or jobs, they say.

Full story…

Barack Obama and John McCain both had some handicaps going into Saturday’s separate appearances here before Latino elected officials.

And after each spent 45 minutes making brief remarks and answering pre-arranged questions, it’s doubtful that they altered the political playing field when it comes to this potentially pivotal voting bloc.

McCain was greeted warmly – if not wildly – by the about 700 members of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials. Obama’s ovations were louder, longer and more frequent.

There’s no question this deck was a little stacked going in. Hispanics traditionally vote more Democratic than Republican and so far all the polls I’ve seen have Obama with a commanding lead among these voters. Despite that, McCain probably got a better reception from this group than any other hopeful his party might have nominated this year.

Full story…

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., met Wednesday evening with Hispanic Republicans in Chicago.

In an Associated Press story  about the meeting, one quote jumped out at me: “He’s one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he’s a different John McCain in front of Hispanics,” Rosanna Pulido, a Latina who heads the Illinois Minuteman Project, told the AP. “He’s having his private meetings to rally Hispanics and to tell them what they want to hear,” she said. “I’m outraged that he would reach out to me as a Hispanic but not as a conservative.”

Pulido seemed to be in a rather interesting position to talk about McCain and immigration, so I gave her a call.

An advocate and escort for seniors professionally, Pulido told me that she’s one of the original Minutemen who stood on the border between Arizona and Mexico in 2005 and she’s also Illinois spokesperson for “You Don’t Speak For Me, American Hispanics Speaking Out On Illegal Immigration.”

Full story…

WASHINGTON — As they ponder a political map that has spelled defeat for Democrats in the last two presidential elections, Barack Obama’s campaign strategists are quietly laying plans to draw African American voters to the polls in unprecedented numbers by capitalizing on the excitement over the prospect of electing the nation’s first black president.

Obama strategists believe they have identified a gold mine of new and potentially decisive Democratic voters in at least five battleground states — voters who failed to turn out in the past but can be mobilized this time because Obama’s candidacy is historic and his cash-rich campaign can afford the costly task of identifying and motivating such supporters.

Full story…

White House hopeful Barack Obama gave a tough-love but optimistic Father’s Day sermon at the Apostolic Church of God Sunday, exhorting other fathers, especially African-Americans, to meet their responsibilities.

“Any fool can have a child — that doesn’t make you a father,” Obama said to cheers of agreement. “Too many fathers are missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities. They are acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families have suffered because of it.

“You and I know this is true everywhere but nowhere is it more true than in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households. Half. There’s a reason why our families are in disrepair and some of it has to do with a tragic history, but we can’t keep on using that as an excuse.”

Full story… 

A federal court yesterday rejected the first legal challenge to a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, in a case that legal scholars view as an important test of one of the country’s seminal pieces of civil rights legislation.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by a municipal utility board in Texas, which argued that part of the law is costly and unconstitutional. Congress reauthorized the law in 2006.

The utility board is likely to appeal directly to the Supreme Court, offering opponents a chance to test the Voting Rights Act before a court that has grown more conservative in recent years.

“This has been about getting it to the Supreme Court,” said Richard Hasen, a professor at Loyola University Law School in Los Angeles who specializes in election law. “Conservative opponents of the law have put a lot of eggs in this basket. This was set up as a test case.”

Full story…