A Minor Correction To Gatemouth

Gatemouth’s commentary on the two Sarahs repeated an “urban legend” about the 2004 campaign that was created when DC pundits still thought Karl Rove was a genius.

http://www.r8ny.com/blog/gatemouth/two_schmuels_for_sister_sarah.html

Gatemouth wrote – “In 2004, there was virtually no effort made by Republicans to attract black voters to George W. Bush, and as a result he got virtually none. The one exception was in Ohio, where helped by the presence on the ballot of an anti-gay marriage initiative, Republicans did undertake such efforts, and Bush managed an eye-popping 25%, which alone may have deprived John Kerry of the White House.”

But David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economics, the think thank that examines the Black vote, has the correct information in his report – The Black Vote in 2004

http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:__tRQ691Uu4J:www.jointcenter.org/index.php/content/download/557/3238/file/BlackVote2004.pdf+2004+ohio+black+vote+for+bush&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=30&gl=us

"Probably the key state where Kerry’s black support ran behind Gore’s was Ohio. In 2000, Bush received only 9 percent of the state’s black votes; in 2004, Bush received 16 percent of them. If that seven-point shift had not occurred, between 40,000 and 45,000 votes for Bush cast by African Americans would have gone to Kerry, narrowing Bush’margin of victory in Ohio by 80,000 to 90,000 votes; Bush won the state by approximately 113,000. If that shift had not occurred, Kerry might have re-thought his ultimate decision not to contest the results in Ohio, a state where more than 150,000 provisional ballots were cast."