Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994 TAG: 9411180030
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-23 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ACEL MOORE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Many of the winners in the election were conservative Republicans who very subtly linked race with the key issues in their campaigns. Those issues are welfare reform, crime and tax reduction.
Many white voters certainly tied black faces to those issues as they did to any social programs for urban dwellers.
Republican leaders, including Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who will likely become the first Republican House speaker in four decades in January, already have said that voters have sent a message that they want less government and that government not tangle up business in red tape.
The mood can probably best be seen in the approval of Proposition 187 in California, which will deny education, welfare and other state aid - other than for emergencies - to illegal immigrants.
The results of the elections showed clearly that voters weren't satisfied with either the performance of President Clinton or the Democratic Party.
Voters told the Democrats that they will have to change their ways. They told the Democrats to distance themselves from positions that are considered too liberal, such as universal health care and funding for social programs. They told Clinton and the Democrats to move further to the right.
If the Republican right holds to its campaign rhetoric, then African-Americans cannot expect initiatives coming out of Congress that will help them. Charles Murray, co-author of ``The Bell Curve,'' may get his way after all. He has asserted that funding for social programs is a waste of money.
Under the new Republican leadership in Congress, it's almost a certainty that nothing in the way of affirmative action or measures that will help African-Americans will be advanced.
What's more likely to come out of the new Republican Congress are the most extreme measures in welfare reform and cuts in all social programs. The impact of the right-wing victory, backed by the religious right, could stifle all progressive initiatives. And the election could have a big impact on the courts, since all federal judgeships have to be confirmed by the Senate. In addition to their victories in Congress, Republicans have taken control of most of the executive mansions and state houses in the South and in many of the big industrial states in the North - including Pennsylvania.
This election, according to Martin Kilson, a political scientist at Harvard University, is a repeat of the election of 1874, which signaled the beginning of the post-Reconstruction period when the Union Army moved out of the South.
In effect, he said, the election results in the South mean that ``the Union Army,'' which went into the South with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has again pulled out.
Because of the Voting Rights Act, blacks won 11 House seats in the South that had been gerrymandered after the 1990 census. But the victory in redistricting was a double-edged sword. As a result, blacks were taken out of neighboring districts, which helped Republicans make substantial gains. Blacks had been a moderating influence in those districts before redistricting. It could be argued that not all was lost for African-Americans last week. J.C. Watts became the first black elected to Congress from Oklahoma. That's the good news. The bad news is that Watts appears to be somewhere to the right of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Watts, a former quarterback at the University of Oklahoma, is against affirmative action and social programs of any sort.
Unfortunately for black Democrats (and any Americans living in poverty in the cities), they are probably better off now than they ever will be after Newt Gingrich and his gang take over next January.
Acel Moore is associate editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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