Legal Activists of Color: Little-Known Group Spends $1 Million on Offensive Ads to Lure Blacks to Vote Republican

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October 19, 2006
Little-Known Group Spends $1 Million on Offensive Ads to Lure Blacks to Vote Republican
A group called America’s PAC has raised almost $1 million to run highly inflammatory radio ads targeting African American voters, urging them to vote Republican in November, according to the New York Sun.

One ad, called “Don’t Go There,” features an exchange between two men. The first man says the second man has no reason to vote Republican because he is unemployed, an adulterer, and won’t serve in the military, and finally he comes to abortion:

Michael: And if you make a little mistake with one of your ho’s, you’ll want to dispose of that problem toot sweet, no questions asked, right?

Dennis: Naw, that’s too cold. I don’t snuff my own seed …

Michael: Huh. Really? (pause) Well, maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican!

Another ad on abortion accuses the “Democrat Party” of “decimating our people” by supporting abortion laws. Over the sound of a thunderstorm and a crying baby, a woman says, “Democrats say they want our votes. Why don’t they want our lives?”

In another ad, “Hazardous Dukes,” the “Michael” character says David Duke visited Syria to support terrorists in Iraq. The speaker continues,

Now, I can understand why a Ku Klux Klan cracker like David Duke makes nice with the terrorists. They fight voting rights in Iraq, just like he does back home. But what I want to know is why so many of the Democrat politicians I helped elect are on the same side of the Iraq war as David Duke.

Duke, the founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was a Republican state representative in Louisiana and ran for governor as a Republican.

Other ads blame Democrats for Hurricane Katrina and voting irregularities in Florida in 2000, call Social Security “the most discriminatory government program we have,” invoke Martin Luther King, and assert that “it’s only the Republicans who support our troops.” Unlike other right-wing efforts to reach out to African Americans by focusing on just abortion and gay marriage, the PAC’s ads range across the panoply of Republican issues, from regulation and “school choice” to Iraq and NSA wiretapping. You can listen to 24 of these radio spots on America’s PAC’s web site <http://www.voteourvalues.com/> .

According to a report by the conservative New York Sun, this “little-known Republican group” has been running ads recently in two dozen congressional districts in Ohio, Indiana, New Mexico, Nevada, and elsewere – the group claims it has bought 17,203 spots in this election cycle. Its financial backers are led by Indianapolis businessman and school voucher advocate <http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=5095> J. Patrick Rooney, who gave at least $900,000 to the group this year. From the Sun <http://www.nysun.com/article/41648> :
Mr. Rooney declined to be interviewed yesterday. The group referred calls from The New York Sun to a conservative, African-American talk show host who voiced some of the ads, Herman Cain.

…

Mr. Cain, who once managed the Godfather's Pizza chain and ran unsuccessfully for the Senate from Georgia in 2004, said he was not troubled that Mr. Rooney, who is white, is funding ads using black voices who claim to speak on behalf of the black community."You don't have a lot of black billionaires who would want to fund something like this," he said.

Another large contributor, New York investment banker Peter Flanigan, said some of the ads were “a little strong” but supported the group because “Rooney has had some success in moving African-American votes.”

Cain, the former head of Godfather’s Pizza and a 2004 candidate for Senate in Georgia, is the face <http://www.voteourvalues.com/> of the group. On America’s PAC’s home page, he brags that Bush was re-elected in 2004 “because of an effective advertising campaign that brought our message to African American voters” in Ohio.

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