Black Americans seeking the lowdown on the goings-on among the Republican Party faithful here need look no further than Faye Anderson.
Anderson, the executive director of the Council of 100, a network of African-American Republican officials, entrepreneurs, educators and civic leaders, is serving as special correspondent for the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for the black press. She is also holding political chats on the Internet for NetNoir, an Afrocentric forum that will be accessible to America Online subscribers. After the convention, she'll file a report for Headway, a monthly magazine on minority politics.
Despite her Republican credentials, Anderson is not one to spew the standard upbeat line that tumbles automatically from most folks' mouths here. Her audience will be treated to an unvarnished report on the convention.
For example, Anderson is up-front in saying that she hopes the tone this year is a far cry from the atmospherics of four years ago in Houston. ``I was sitting in the hall when Pat Buchanan did his thing, and it was chilling,'' she recalled. ``He talked about taking back our streets--taking back from whom?''
When pressed on how she feels the Republican Party is doing in reaching out to minorities, Anderson said it has ``missed the opportunity'' to make inroads.
``The black middle class has the same concerns as middle-class whites,'' Anderson said with a tone of frustration. ``The traditional Republican message will sell in the black community.''
Her concerns boiled over when Robert Dole, the party's presidential nominee, recently declined a chance to speak before the NAACP's annual convention. Anderson wrote an op-ed article in The New York Times arguing that Dole ``could have connected with the delegates'' there by touting his own strong civil rights record.
``I have yet to hear from anyone in the Dole campaign. I would think that kind of piece begs for a response,'' she said. She pins the blame for such maneuvers on those whom she derisively refers to as ``gray suits''--the advisers to Dole who push ``wedge issues'' to try to score political points.
``Obviously the Republican Party has a winning mainstream message, or President Clinton would not appropriate it as shamelessly as he does,'' she added.
Given Clinton's move to grab so many Republican themes, Anderson said now is the perfect time to challenge blacks' overwhelming ties to Democrats. Instead, she said, the party has given the Christian Coalition and the anti-abortion movement disproportionate clout. ``This vocal, active, energetic minority is driving out everyone else,'' she said.
Anderson has had politics in her blood since she went to political rallies as a youngster with her mother, but she has traversed a lot of political territory since then. She was a Democrat, but after attending the 1984 Democratic National Convention, she was so put off by the party's failure to address the breakdown in values that she changed her allegiance.
Now she is fighting to effect change within the Republican Party. ``It's a good party, but I think it has lost its way--not in terms of values and not in terms of principles, but just in terms of strategy and tactics,'' she said.
Anderson, who coldly declines to reveal her age, saying that a woman who confides that information ``will tell anything,'' is almost plaintive as she talks of the party's failure to aggressively seek support from blacks.
``Given all the rhetoric in the last couple of years about `outreach' and `big tent,' I would have expected, if anything, that there would have been an increase--that's the surprise, that there has not been an increase,'' she said.
Despite such feelings, Anderson's theme to her audience will highlight the need to persevere. ``We have to keep plugging away--to give up would be to give up on having any political policy influence in this country,'' she said.
NEXT STORY: Homestudy For FCC Chief