Courting Minorities,Kerry Promises Expanded College Access

[DeepModem Mom]

New York Times:

Courting Minorities, Kerry Promises Expanded College Access
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Published: June 30, 2004


PHOENIX, June 29 - Hoping to energize minority voters, Senator John Kerry promised blacks and Hispanics on Tuesday that he would expand access to college, and he delivered a forceful new answer to Republican charges that he is running a campaign of pessimism.

"This administration says this is the best economy of our lifetime," he told the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition in Chicago. "They say this is the best that we can do. They've even called us pessimists because we dared to tell the truth about the people without health care" and about shortcomings in the Bush administration's education and prescription-drug initiatives, he said....

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The Rainbow/PUSH gathering was the same event where, in June 1992, Bill Clinton infuriated the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the group's leader, by questioning why the rap artist Sister Souljah had been invited to speak after making remarks about killing white people.

By contrast, Mr. Kerry said nothing to antagonize his hosts. In a race where both parties are seeking to energize their base, he is courting the same strong minority support that Mr. Clinton and Al Gore enjoyed but has been criticized for not having enough minority representation in senior positions in his campaign.

On Saturday, after Mr. Kerry spoke to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, its director, Arturo Vargas, repeated that complaint, saying, "I don't think either campaign has done well enough to date, frankly." On Tuesday, Mr. Kerry had two recent African-American hires along for the trip: Terry Edmonds, his director of speechwriting, who held the same job in the Clinton White House, and Brian Burke, a domestic policy adviser. Later in Phoenix, he named Jose Villareal, a San Antonio lawyer who is chairman of La Raza, a leading Hispanic group, as a national co-chairman of his campaign....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/30/politics/campaign/30kerry.html