Tell It!

ELEVEN days after a midterm election that went disastrously for her party, Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager, sent out a memo warning that worse news could be coming. As badly as 2002 had gone, she and a colleague said, at least black voters had turned out in force for the Democrats. Republicans, however, had made an “unprecedented African American communications effort” on black radio stations during the campaign. Democrats were going to face new challenges in 2003 and 2004. “Preeminent among those challenges,” the two wrote, was “Republican messaging to Democratic base voters.”

The memo implied that this “messaging” was the work of the Republican party. Actually, it was a small independent consultancy that conceived and designed the radio ads. The main people behind it were Richard Nadler and John Uhlmann, two conservative activists from Kansas City. (Nadler is an old friend of mine.) In 2001 and 2002, they tried a new tactic for dealing with one of the Republican party’s longstanding problems: its poor showing among black and Hispanic voters. That tactic has already had more success than anything the party has tried.

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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ELEVEN days after a midterm election that went disastrously for her party, Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager, sent out a memo warning that worse news could be coming. As badly as 2002 had gone, she and a colleague said, at least black voters had turned out in force for the Democrats. Republicans, however, had made an “unprecedented African American communications effort” on black radio stations during the campaign. Democrats were going to face new challenges in 2003 and 2004. “Preeminent among those challenges,” the two wrote, was “Republican messaging to Democratic base voters.”

The memo implied that this “messaging” was the work of the Republican party. Actually, it was a small independent consultancy that conceived and designed the radio ads. The main people behind it were Richard Nadler and John Uhlmann, two conservative activists from Kansas City. (Nadler is an old friend of mine.) In 2001 and 2002, they tried a new tactic for dealing with one of the Republican party’s longstanding problems: its poor showing among black and Hispanic voters. That tactic has already had more success than anything the party has tried.