Record Number Of Blacks Run for Senate, Governor

BOSTON — The number of blacks running for U.S. senator or governor this year will set a record. The number of winners may not.

Three Senate and three gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot in the November 7 elections, more than at any time in American history; even more unusual is that three of the candidates are Republicans.

In the highest-profile races, Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele, a Republican, is trailing in polls in the race for a Maryland Senate seat, while Rep. Harold Ford, a Democrat, is in a dead heat in Tennessee. At the moment, only one black candidate — Deval Patrick, a Democrat who is running for governor of Massachusetts — is favored to win.

"In most places, race is still an issue," David Bositis said. Mr. Bositis is a senior research analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington research group that focuses on black political affairs.

Black representation in the highest statewide offices has been infinitesimal since the end of the post-Civil War Reconstruction. Only four blacks have won such races: Democrats Douglas Wilder, who was governor of Virginia; a former senator of Illinois, Carol Moseley Braun, the current senator of Illinois, Barack Obama, and Republican Edward Brooke, who served two terms as a senator of Massachusetts.

While many of the 42 black U.S. representatives are from majority-black districts, contenders for statewide offices must appeal to a more diverse constituency. The result is that they play down racial questions, focusing on taxes, foreign policy, and social programs.

"What you're getting is a much more pragmatic black politician," a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, Geoffrey Layman, said. "They have to make white voters forget about race."

Mr. Ford, 36, has taken up that challenge in Republican-dominated Tennessee, where only 17% of residents are black. At his campaign events, he stresses his conservative record in his five terms in the House, where he voted to oppose flag-burning and gay marriage and in favor of strong border enforcement and the war in Iraq.