WASHINGTON - From affirmative action to federal judges to tax policy, Democrats are painting President Bush as an opponent of minority causes, countering Republican efforts to attract black and Latino voters for the 2004 elections.
A month after Mississippi Republican Trent Lott was forced to step down as Senate majority leader for making racially charged remarks, his party is working to mend its image among minority groups. But that effort coincides with the rollout of Bush's new agenda, which includes the nomination of conservatives to the federal judiciary and a tax cut most favorable to the wealthy that blacks and Latinos say threaten some of the gains they have made.
Last week, Bush spoke out sharply against the University of Michigan's affirmative action policies, arguing that the university's system of giving minority applicants an advantage in admissions amounted to unconstitutional quotas.
Bush took that stance as the Supreme Court prepares to hear the most significant challenge to affirmative action in 25 years. And it comes as Republicans face criticism from Democrats and black lawmakers that they are not devoted to the issues dearest to minority groups.
The president's position "called into question his commitment to expanding opportunity for African-American, Hispanic and Native American students," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said Monday in a speech celebrating the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "All of us are left to draw one conclusion: His words about promoting educational opportunity were just that - words."
It is an accusation to which Republicans might feel vulnerable, given the uproar that toppled Lott after he said America would have been better served had it elected Strom Thurmond president in 1948, when Thurmond ran as a segregationist.
Image-mending
Lott's successor, Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee, a Bush ally, delivered a speech on King's birthday in which he pledged to work for racial reconciliation and minority opportunities.
Bush appeared Monday at an African-American church in Landover with a similar appeal: "There are still people in society who hurt. There is still prejudice holding people back."
The events were timely opportunities for top Republicans to try to repair their party's image among minority voters.
"The president and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill are trying to send a message that the Republican Party wants to create a new paradigm when it comes to how it addresses the issue of race and how it reaches out," said Niger Innis, a spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality, the group Frist spoke to Monday.
That message could be crucial for Republicans, who hope to gain more of the growing black and Latino votes, and to retain support among whites sensitive to the treatment of minorities.
"The black and the Hispanic populations are growing much more quickly than the white population, and in many individual states, they're now becoming a voting bloc that is going to make it very, very difficult for Republicans to win those states," said David Bositis, a political analyst at the liberal-leaning Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.
"For 25 years, race was a plus for the Republicans - they used it to gain white votes," he said. "But there aren't any additional white votes for them to gain."
Last week, Frist joined officials of the Republican National Committee and black and Latino Republicans from around the country to discuss ways to recruit minority candidates and build a record of achievement on issues of concern to them.
"Our goal is to increase our base in the African-American community, and we know that black voters are ready to listen," said Pamela Mantis, an RNC spokeswoman.
Matthew Dowd, the president's pollster, has reportedly calculated that if Bush won the same proportion of the white and minority votes next year that he did in 2000, he would lose the presidential election.
In a rare weekend announcement made just days after Bush took his stance in the Michigan case, the administration said Sunday night that for 2004 it will request a 5 percent increase in funding for colleges and graduate schools that serve black and Latino students.
Congress, though, is expected to provide this week more funding than Bush had sought for those institutions for 2003. So, Bush's request for 2004 would amount to only about a 2.4 percent increase.
Some black conservatives say the Lott incident - in which the president's harsh rebuke of the senator was seen as a signal for Lott to step down as leader - will ultimately help Republicans attract minority votes.
"The Trent Lott issue, and President Bush's response to it, showed black people the change in the Republican Party," said Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, who is black. Republicans, he said, "are taking back the moral high ground on race, and slowly eroding it away from Democrats."
Still, in a move regarded by some critics as an affront, Bush has renominated Charles W. Pickering Sr., whom Lott has championed, to a federal appeals court seat. Last year, the Democrat-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee blocked Pickering's nomination over his record on racial matters.
Some Republican moderates have signaled discomfort about the renomination and about Bush's position in the Michigan case, fearful that such actions could hurt their party's credibility with minority groups.
"It's very difficult to say whether or not that was a wise decision," Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican, said of the Pickering nomination. "It certainly does create questions about the message."
Snowe has also expressed disappointment with Bush's stance in the affirmative action case.
"The policy seems to be going back to a climate that is completely inconsistent with promoting things that the civil rights community and groups like ours are concerned about," said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Baltimore Democrat who leads the Congressional Black Caucus.
Bush's recent actions have "opened up a chasm between the parties that, certainly, the Democratic Party can exploit for political reasons," said Ronald Walters, director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Democrats plan to craft what they call "a common-sense civil rights agenda" that contrasts their positions with Republicans'. They have discussed initiatives to push, including an increase in education funding, a rise in the minimum wage and the outlawing of hate crimes, in addition to opposing Bush's most conservative judicial nominees.
Bush, meanwhile, is working to show his base that he has not abandoned conservative principles after the Lott incident, as his position on the Michigan case reflected. He pleased conservatives by opposing the school's admissions policies. Yet he avoided saying whether diversity could ever be an interest compelling enough for race to be considered in admissions.
Unconvinced
Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, offered a more expansive view, saying in a statement: "I believe that while race-neutral means are preferable, it is appropriate to use race as one factor among others in achieving a diverse student body."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell distanced himself even further from Bush's stance in television interviews Sunday, saying that he disagreed with the White House brief and thought that Michigan had a "strong case."
"I am a strong proponent of affirmative action," Powell said.
Powell and Rice are the most senior African-American officials in the Bush administration.
Some Republicans cheered Bush's position in the case and said the nuanced way he presented it showed a new recognition that Republicans must offer clearer explanations about their positions on racial issues.
"There is a greater sensitivity now, a greater understanding that whether it's a judge or a Supreme Court case, it's important to explain our positions so that people know where we're coming from," said Sen. George F. Allen, the Virginia Republican who is leading his party's campaign effort for the 2004 congressional elections.
Bositis said that better communication alone would not convince minority voters that the Republican Party supports their goals.
"What the Republicans are trying to do is to make themselves appear different from what they fundamentally are, and African-Americans are quite suspicious of them," Bositis said. "It's not like they're going to be able to do a PR campaign and African-Americans are going to say, 'Whoa! I should have been loving these guys. I just didn't understand them.'"