White republican wins election by fooling black voters

Politics & Elections
21

Looking it up now Dave Wilson didn’t have even a single endorsement from anyone or any group.

And his opponent was a 24-year long incumbent.

The voters in his district must have really hated the incumbent or been really easily fooled. I don’t like Wilson and he’s a bigot, but I don’t feel too sorry for Austin who lost his seat, either.

And honestly, ok so the guy never “admitted” that he was white, never put his photo up anywhere, etc. Austin did, and the white guy still won. The Ron Wilson thing is funny to me, but incredibly misleading and sleazy.

Still, I find it fascinating and now we have a racist republican representing a Democratic black district.

22

The guy must have just watched The Distinguished Gentleman.

23

Huh? That’s the whole premise of the OP, that he fooled voters into thinking that he was black.

Now maybe the KHOU TV station that the Gawker article cites got it wrong. Maybe because blacks in that area vote overwhelmingly Democrat, seeing a mailer with black faces and thinking he was endorsed by Democrat Ron Wilson made the voters think that they were voting for a democrat. It’s possible. But wouldn’t a D or R appear on the ballot?

24

That’s not shown. Him being thought to be black can have an affect on how people voted without being the reason for why he was voted for; it can affect the actual reasons without being a reason itself.

An example might be if schools in the area are fairly segregated race-wise. Let’s say there’s a school of which a majority of the student body is black, and that it is a shitty school, rundown, lacking in teachers and textbooks, the works. Another school in the area has a majority white population, and is a lovely place that has oodles of money to spend on each student. If the candidate says that his old alma mater desperately needs special attention and more money to help them out, then whether the voter assumes he is black or white has an affect on how they may vote without his actual race being the reason why they’re voting for the guy. The reason they’d be voting is “Yep, I concur/disagree with his assessment of that school”, with his race only affecting the assumption of which school he went to.

25

Behold! The hypocrisy. White people do the same damned thing. Otherwise, how in the hell do you think we ended up with 43 white male presidents and 44 white male vice presidents? C’mon, go ahead, give a guess as to why that happened. White people are, above all, are the only group of people who beg minorities to cough up their ethnicity at every roadbend. This isn’t just on the Census but with driver’s license/State IDs and even on college applications or to apply for food stamp benefits. Here’s a helpful hint: Blacks will stop talking about race when white people stop pleading, begging, and nagging us about revealing our race every other minute; it’s obvious whites use the data, not to help, but to squeeze and gerrymander the black vote into non-existence. You’re not helping, you don’t think we’re equal, so why bother collect data on where we are at? Instead, for the next census, why not focus on counting the number of U.S citizens rather than focusing on what color someone’s skin, eh?

What Wilson did is, in my opinion, voter fraud. It’s precisely what the white voters did in Michigan when they lied to black voters to support an anti-Affirmative Action measure. Here, in August 2006, white people were taken to task by a federal court judge where he, in part, wrote :

[QUOTE=Judge Tarnow, U.S. District Judge]
The People of Michigan should also be concerned by the indifference exhibited by the state agencies who could have investigated and addressed MCRI’s actions but failed to do so. With the exception of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, the record shows that the state has demonstrated an almost complete institutional indifference to the credible allegations of voter fraud raised by Plaintiffs.

<snip>

All Michigan voters, whether supporters or opponents of affirmative action, should be concerned by the actions taken by MCRI in its attempt to place the proposed amendment on the November 2006 ballot. In particular, opponents of affirmative action should be concerned by what the MCRI has done while purporting to act in their name. **If the proposal eventually passes, it will be stained by well-documented acts of fraud and deception that the defendants, as a matter of fact, have not credibly denied. **
[/QUOTE]

Bolding mine.

In general, the majority have a long history of using the democratic process to subvert the black vote. Blaming the victims - the duped voters - is just a way for them sleep better at night. Nothing more, nothing less. The majority is angry that their Southern Strategy chickens are coming home to roost and have irreversibly and demographically lost the Executive Branch for the foreseeable future.

  • Honesty

P.S. In other news, Detroit, a city that’s >80% black elected a white guy. Unlike this clown, Duggan didn’t have to lie his black constituents to get their vote.

26

So was the other guy.

27

Occam’s razor

28

Tell that Mike Duggan or, for that matter, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, or Chris Christie.

  • Honesty
29

Seriously?

30

Yes.

Except it doesn’t: as Procrustus said, they thought both candidates were black. So what it shows is that they were persuaded to vote for Wilson believing that he was black and had been endorsed by Ron Wilson.

31

Yes. A convoluted and contrived “explanation” like yours or the simple (and pretty common-sense) one like mine?

32

Yeah cuz if he was white and endorsed by Ron Wilson he wouldn’t win. What am I saying - he just wouldn’t be endorsed by Ron Wilson, would he?

Again, from his opponent’s own words, he thinks that Wilson won because voters thought he was black. He even tried to “fight” that perception by printing pamphlets with Wilson’s face on them. But I guess he doesn’t know what’s going on. You, from far away, do.

33

He’s talking about the false impression Wilson created. He presented himself as a candidate familiar with the local black community and a support of a popular black representative. That perception wouldn’t exist if voters had known Wilson was the white conservative who’d run for mayor and lost.

Still, this is another fascinating development: you’ve decided the candidate is the greatest expert on why he won or lost. That’ll be interesting to apply to other elections.

I didn’t realize you were a voter in District 2. Perhaps you can give us your firsthand perspective on the campaigns. I’d love to have an insider’s view!

34

Well, they ought to have known that, unless it was a long time ago.

35

Well, a), common sense just means “This is what my immediate reaction is”, and naturally people’s immediate reactions are going to be different. Effectively all you’re saying by “it’s common sense” is “I already have an idea as to what goes on even before hearing of this particular evidence”, which effectively makes the whole thing a circular argument; I think that this evidence shows this because it’s common sense, and it’s common sense because look, here’s the evidence! And b) “Occam’s razor” put bluntly like that when you apparently see flaws in my argument isn’t a particularly useful response.

Which part of my example do you find convoluted and contrived? That schools might contain a student body that isn’t particularly diverse? That the candidate in question might use people’s misunderstanding to his own benefit (which you seem to agree he did do)? That people might vote according to what candidates say about their local area? If we’re going by common sense approaches, that all seems fairly common sense to me. Besides which, I wasn’t even saying that was the way things happened. It was an example of a way in which race could affect voter’s decisions without race itself being the reason behind that decision. Do you agree that that concept is something which is possible, at the very least?

And besides besides which, “Occam’s razor” is a terrible argument. Do you honestly believe that we can safely say that the simplest answer is usually the right one?

36

It sounds like he ran in 2011 as a third party candidate. The mayor serves a two-year term, so it wasn’t the most recent election. In context it’s not too surprising if most people didn’t realize it was the same Dave Wilson.

37

That is, the other candidate actually is black. And the incumbent, so it was probably a well-known fact.

38

The part where you made it up with no relation whatsoever to reality.

39

I really didn’t see anywhere in the articles that touched on the matter whether Wilson presented himself as a “conservative” or not. What he didn’t, emphatically, present himself as is “white”. So - exactly how his being white is supposed to be relevant to the election, unless the color of the skin influences people’s voting?

The opposing candidate lives in the district and was intimately and intensely involved in the election. I would think his opinion on why he lost counts more than someone’s who is outside the district and has not followed the election - wouldn’t you.

40

<nitpick>
43 white male vice presidents. Charles Curtis, VP under Herbert Hoover, was of mixed European and Native American ancestry. He was an enrolled member of the Kaw tribe.
</nitpick>

If Obama, of mixed European and African ancestry, doesn’t count as white then neither does Curtis.