THE BUNKER, Jan. 22 — What’s left of the Newhouse bureau in Washingon, D.C., managed a story today for the Birmingham Snooze on the new book out by Gwen Ifill of Public Television on politics and race, which includes a section on Birmingham Congressman Artur Davis.
A new book about politics and race includes a chapter on Rep. Artur Davis in which he bluntly lays out his strategy for running for governor of Alabama in 2010 and how it is similar to President Barack Obama’s campaign.
“It’s going to require me going into communities that have not typically had black politicians on the ballot,” Davis told the author. “It’s going to require me going into places all around the state and saying, `Look, I’m not that different from you.’”
The book, released Tuesday, is The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Its title ignited a controversy during the presidential campaign because Ifill, a PBS journalist and moderator of “Washington Week,” was a moderator of the vice presidential debate, and critics questioned whether her forthcoming book signaled a bias toward the Democratic ticket.
The chapter on Davis is partly a political biography of the fourth-term congressman and partly an analysis of how Obama’s historic election affects Davis’ desire to be Alabama’s first black governor.
Ifill declares it a “tall order” for Alabama, where Obama won only 10 percent of the white vote in November.
She calls Davis a “political junkie” who has calculated that he needs 38 percent of the white vote plus a higher-than-normal turnout among black voters to win a general election.
Ifill also quotes Washington, D.C., delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, a black Democrat, as being skeptical that Davis will wind up in the governor’s mansion in Montgomery.
“Of all states, that’s the worst state I could think of now to run in. A terrible state,” she told Ifill in an interview before Obama’s nomination.
But the book also discusses how Davis’ moves so far are calculated to improve his chances: He won his congressional seat by breaking with established black political leaders and appealing to white voters; he broke with them again by backing Obama early in the Democratic primary; and he built a more moderate voting record in six years in Congress.
“I have a very strong commitment to expanding opportunities for excluded people, whether they are black or white, whether they live in urban areas or rural areas. Does that make me a new leader?” Davis asked.
“It did, and it does,” Ifill wrote.
Sharpton, Siegelman:
Two other items in the chapter stand out. First, Ifill asked the Rev. Al Sharpton why he went to Alabama in 2002 to tell voters that Davis couldn’t be trusted, and Sharpton said he did it because he had family members in the state who asked him to help the incumbent Rep. Earl Hilliard. Davis won the race.
Second, Ifill writes that Davis said he “had no choice” but to support a congressional inquiry into the criminal case against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who claims he was targeted by politically motivated Republican prosecutors.
Davis told Ifill that he worried it would “smell of the old-fashioned partisan politics he claims to eschew,” but he was the only Alabamian on the committee leading the investigation.
“Barely know him, barely know him,” Davis told Ifill. Davis also said he expected most Alabamians to ignore the Siegelman controversy and that he was “counting on it to fade away well before 2010,” Ifill wrote.
