DATA AND METHODOLOGY

In 1972, at about the same time that these “new” presidential campaign managers were emerging on the nation's electoral landscape, the Institute of Politics began a tradition of gathering together a group of campaign managers, senior advisers, journalists, media commentators, and pollsters after each presidential election. At this unique symposium the managers and advisers “engage in an exchange of views about their strategies and tactics during the course of the campaign” (HUIP 2009, p. xv). These major campaign players are questioned by a moderator, by each other, and by a host of leading members of the media, as well as by students, scholars, and invited guests. The entire multi-day symposium is recorded, and the Institute of Politics published in book form “a lightly-edited transcript of these discussions every four years so that future candidates, managers, journalists, and scholars can better understand the nature of modern presidential campaigns as they appear to the participants at the time” (HUIP 2009, p. xv). This means that there now are ten books that cover these campaign mangers for every presidential election from 1972 until 2008. It is a very rare record indeed, and these publications constitute the database for this work.

Why produce such a body of work? Ernest May, the Director of the Institute of Politics during the initial 1972 symposium, wrote:

In the last section of each book, the campaign managers are asked to look ahead and discuss the implications of their campaign for the next one. We analyzed their remarks regarding a potential African American presidential candidate for this study.Footnote ⁶

In some of these ten elections there was a triggering mechanism—the presence of African American presidential candidates—which set into motion these experts' reflections on other such candidates in the next election cycle. To be sure, the lack of such a candidate, or their poor performance, or both could inhibit such a discussion about the next presidential election. Thus, the question is whether or not such a discussion did occur. Clearly, with an African American president now in the White House, there is very clearly a need to know whether anyone on the practical side of politics—those involved in the day-to-day operations of campaigns—saw such a candidate coming, or simply dismissed him or her as a non-viable candidate, and why.Footnote ⁷

The year that the symposium was launched, 1972, was also the first time that an African American woman launched a campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. The pioneering effort of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm broke with the tradition of African American presidential candidates running for minor or third party nominations, and eventually led to similar African American campaigns for the Republican Party nomination.

The Institute of Politics did not stand alone during these ten elections. Its approach generated a similar symposium at the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania beginning in 1992. To date, they have published the transcripts from only the 2000, 2004 and 2008 meetings. The Harvard series covers both primary and general election candidates, whereas the Pennsylvania series covers the general election only (Jamieson Reference Jamieson2006).

In 2000 and 2004 only the two major parties' candidates for president and vice president were invited to the Annenberg symposia, along with consultants and media people. Thus, the strength of their studies is the greater detail and coverage offered on the main participants, while Harvard's books offer more broad-based coverage of campaign managers, particularly those of the primary election. The two series, when combined, offer unique coverage and an interesting diversity of viewpoints about this new group of expert players in American presidential elections, as well as rich insights into what happened and what may happen in future elections.

Table 1 matches the presidential years covered by these books with the African American presidential candidates running for major party nominations. Congresswoman Chisholm in 1972, Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988, former U.S. Senator Carol Moseley Braun and Reverend Al Sharpton in 2004, and U.S. Senator Barack Obama in 2008 all sought the Democratic Party's nomination. Former Maryland U.S. Senate candidate Alan Keyes ran in 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2008 as the sole African American Republican presidential candidate in this time period. Beyond these five major presidential elections (1972, 1984, 1988, 2004, and 2008), there also surfaced some other candidates who made limited attempts to run (Governor L. Douglas Wilder and General Colin Powell).

Table 1.

African American Presidential Campaign Participants and Observers at the Symposia on Campaign Managers

* African American.

Source: Adapted from the ten books Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 1972–2008 and the three books Electing the President, 2000, 2004 and 2008: The Insiders' View (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, 2006 & 2009).

In all of these presidential elections, only Barack Obama won sufficient primary elections or caucuses to capture a major party nomination. Jesse Jackson proved to be a serious contender in 1988, but he did not win enough primaries. Many among his base of supporters thought that he might be considered for a vice-presidential position, but he was turned down in 1988 by Michael Dukakis and in 1992 by Governor Bill Clinton. The 1988 race might have caused some campaign managers to speculate or the collective appearance of all of these men and women might have caused speculation and/or forecasts.

The methodological tool used in this paper is a content analysis of the transcripts embedded in these thirteen books, particularly those that coincided with the years in which major African American presidential candidates ran. Here, we will not be doing the standard numerical counts of words, sentences, or key terms that are at the heart of the content analysis methodology. Instead, the modified approach used here will focus on the specific discussions in these transcripts that forecast an African American president. In addition, our content analysis methodology will search for reasons, if any are given, as to why these forecasts are made. Finally, we will search for the accuracy and validity of these forecasts.

With our findings, as well as non-findings, in hand, we then will be able to offer some insight about the nature and significance of campaign managers as forecasters of future African American presidential candidates and their potential for success in presidential primaries, general elections, or both. In this manner, our study can enrich the literature on African American politics, presidential campaigns, and elections. At this moment, such information does not exist, but should.

CAMPAIGN MANAGERS IN 1972: FORECAST FROM CONGRESSWOMAN SHIRLEY CHISHOLM'S RACE

Of all the campaign managers, senior advisors, and media people invited to the inaugural symposium at the Institute of Politics in Cambridge, Massachusetts on January 5 and 6, 1973, there were none from the pioneering campaign of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (HUIP Reference Chisholm1973, pp. vii–ix). On January 25, 1972, Chisholm announced that she would run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. All of the members of the newly formed Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) were opposed to her candidacy, except Congressman Ronald Dellums of Oakland, California.

Chisholm, the first Congresswoman from Brooklyn, New York, declared that she would not be just the “Black” candidate, but one for all people. She said:

During her campaign, Chisholm ran in twelve of the Democratic presidential primaries and won in New Jersey. She arrived at the Democratic National Convention with 152 delegates, which was five percent of the total number of delegates at the Convention (Walton and Smith, p. 152). This was not enough to affect the outcome or the nomination process, so she had to release her delegates after the first ballot.Footnote ⁸ But her pioneering campaign and innovative effort laid the groundwork for the future.Footnote ⁹

The opening remarks of the initial Harvard symposium included the opinion that some of the 1972 presidential candidates “ran without any expectation of winning, among them Sam Yorty, the pronouncedly conservative Mayor of Los Angeles, and Shirley Chisholm, a Black member of Congress from New York” (HUIP Reference Chisholm1973, p. 5). At the 1972 Democratic Convention, the speaker noted, “(George) McGovern then easily won the nomination. He had more than the requisite 1509 votes by the time Illinois was polled. In the final count, he had a total of 1864.95; (Henry) Jackson had 485.65; (George) Wallace had 337.5; (Shirley) Chisholm had 101.45; and 186.45 were scattered among other candidates or recorded as abstentions” (HUIP Reference Chisholm1973, p. 18). These two statements were the only mention of Congresswoman Chisholm's pioneering campaign, and both of them appeared in the first few pages of the book, before the campaign managers and senior advisors had even spoken about the particular details, tactics, and strategies of the 1972 campaign. There was nothing said in the discussions or in the question and answer sessions about the Chisholm campaign. At the end of the Introduction, however, the authors note that:

There were campaign managers and senior advisors present from incumbent President Richard Nixon's campaign and from that of the Democratic nominee Senator George McGovern. There also were campaign people there from Democratic challengers such as Governor George Wallace, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and Senator Edmund Muskie. Finally, the director of the DNC's national voter-registration drive, Anne Wexler, was there and surely she had to know something about the party's effort to get out the vote in the African American community. But an effort to attract Black voters is not the same thing as a presidential campaign. The volume's focus on voter turnout rather than the Chisholm campaign clearly delineates priorities. Chisholm was invisible to the planners of this symposium. No one saw the importance of even this limited campaign as an invaluable socializing and teaching tool for future African American presidential candidates and campaigns. Neither the planners nor the campaign managers spoke about the implications of this aspect of the 1972 campaign for the election of 1976.

CAMPAIGN MANAGERS IN 1976 AND 1980: FORECASTS FOR THE NEXT ELECTIONS

The only African American candidates for major party presidential nominations to surface in 1976 were Congressman Walter Fauntroy and Mayor Walter Washington of the District of Columbia. Both entered the Democratic primary in their home District, and both lost to former Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia, even though the District of Columbia was more than sixty-five percent Black. Although Mayor Washington lost badly, the race between Congressman Fauntroy and Governor Carter was very close, with 10,521 votes for Carter to 10,149 votes for Fauntroy (HUIP 1977, p. 172). Washington D.C. thus had two African Americans running as “favorite son” candidates. Those candidates who can get a group of delegates committed to them can arrive at the party's national convention and attempt to bargain with the frontrunners in their bid for the uncommitted delegates. Such a strategy works only if neither of the two major contenders has already secured enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. In 1976, Carter had enough delegates to win the nomination without bargaining with either Fauntroy or Washington. Thus, their strategy failed. This left the 1976 contest without an African American presidential candidate.

In the absence of an African American candidate, there was little for the 1976 campaign managers and senior advisors to speculate about for the 1980 election. However, a notable participant at the 1976 post-election symposium was one of President Carter's Deputy Campaign Directors, Benjamin D. Brown—the first African American in a formal campaign position to attend. The emergence of the “Black vote” held a significant place in the 1976 symposium, and it was given an entire section in that year's volume. Early in the discussion, Brown noted that “everybody had looked for the national established leadership to deliver the votes to the designee of the liberal wing of the party,” rather than a born-again southerner such as Jimmy Carter. He continued: “historically, Blacks have followed the national leadership, and we had a very strong movement among national leaders to have Blacks go uncommitted—but I knew full well that was Hubert Humphrey's movement. Our strategy was to develop our own network of people through a very low key operation” (HUIP 1977, p. 93). The Carter team was not worried about being able to campaign among the African American voters in the South, but rather in the North. Carter's campaign manager, Hamilton Jordan, noted that “the turnout in the Black areas in the South was fantastic; in some of the precincts, Carter was getting ninety-three to ninety-five percent of the Black votes” (HUIP 1977, p. 129). Many of his aides felt that this was due to the fact that Carter's “Black media started in the South” (HUIP 1977, p. 129).Footnote ¹⁰ Brown reported that they knew Carter's campaign had begun to work in the northern African American communities when “we got our first indication in Massachusetts that Jimmy Carter was selling to Black communities: we polled upwards of forty percent of the Black vote in Roxbury (part of Boston), which was a clear indication that there was a breakthrough in Black communities in the North” (HUIP 1977, p. 93). But mere campaign organizing and media advertisements were not the only force working for the Carter ticket in the North. Brown declared that:

In fact, there was a counter-effort underway: “there was a tremendous (President Gerald) Ford campaign to draw crossovers, even ads on Black radio, trying to get votes against (Governor Ronald) Reagan” (HUIP 1977, p. 105). Carter pollster Pat Caddell found that thirteen to fifteen percent of the Democrats in the state of Michigan did cross over and voted in the Republican primaries for native son President Ford.

The final factor mobilizing the African American voters for Carter was the appearance of Governor George Wallace in the Democratic presidential primaries. His campaign manager, Charles Snider, told the audience:

This was sheer nonsense, and a boldfaced effort to put the 1976 Wallace campaign in the best possible light for historical purposes. African American voters were well aware of Wallace's involvement with the Dixiecrats in 1948 and that some twenty years later he ran a racist campaign to get elected in Alabama where he declared “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever”, as his public stand as Governor at the door of the University of Alabama to keep it from being desegregated; and his endless efforts to bar African Americans from voting in the state. His loss had nothing to do with his name-calling of Jimmy Carter.

John Deardourff, a media consultant for President Gerald R. Ford, helped to close the 1976 symposium with these comments about the African American voter from the Republican perspective:

Thus, with this single-minded focus on “Black voters” and no concern whatsoever for potential African American presidential candidates, campaign managers and senior advisors simply did not consider such a possibility in 1976, nor did the sole African American present—whose focus had to be upon Carter getting elected and not on the potential for an African American presidential candidate.

As Table 1 reveals, the only African American presidential candidate to surface in 1980 was Congressman Ronald Dellums of California, who campaigned not in the primaries but at the Democratic National Convention, where he got just a few delegate votes. The 1980 symposium was like the 1976 one in that there was a single African American participant, Deputy Campaign Manager, Ronald H. Brown. He served in that capacity for Senator Edward Kennedy, who opposed President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic presidential primaries.

The 1980 symposium also was like the 1972 and 1976 meetings in that the campaign managers and senior advisors once again focused their conversation on the “Black vote” rather than on the possibility of an African American presidential campaign. What follows is the only exchange that took place on the Black electorate:

These very brief remarks ended the discussion on the matter of race. They made no forecast, like their counterparts in 1972 and 1976. All we see here is a preoccupation with Black voting behavior, and not even very much of that.

Deputy Manager Ronald Brown differed significantly from his predecessor Deputy Manager Benjamin Brown in that in the 1980 symposium he did not speak about African American voters or how to mobilize them. Instead, he talked about the Edward Kennedy presidential campaign, and some of the reforms that Senator Kennedy might pursue in the 1980 post-election period. In fact, Kennedy's reforms led to new rules governing future Democratic presidential primaries in areas such as super delegates and proportional delegate votes. These reforms would set the stage for the rise of Jesse Jackson in the 1980s.

CAMPAIGN MANAGERS IN 1984 AND 1988: FORECASTS FROM THE JACKSON CAMPAIGNS

Reverend Jesse Jackson had worked with the Carter campaigns and watched his reelection defeat in 1980. He launched his own “Southern Crusade” “in Norfolk, Virginia, on May 13, 1983 … designed to focus public attention on the need for voting rights enforcement in order to stimulate voter registration and especially to bring to the attention of the American public the practice ‘of the Democrats of accepting integrated voting but segregated slate making’” (McLemore and Coleman, Reference McLemore, Coleman and Walton1994, p. 52). Although the Southern Crusade was carried out in the eleven states of the Confederacy plus Kentucky, “Jackson spent most of his time in Mississippi during this period because of the impending statewide elections in that state” (McLemore and Coleman, Reference McLemore, Coleman and Walton1994, p. 52). While in Mississippi, “Jackson discovered massive voting rights violations against Blacks, and he noted that these violations were both structural and psychological” (McLemore and Coleman, Reference McLemore, Coleman and Walton1994, p. 52). As a consequence of uncovering these violations, Jackson

The end result of Jackson's Southern Crusade was double-digit increases in the number of Black elected officials in Mississippi and ten other southern states. With all of these newly registered African American voters, Jackson launched his campaign for the 1984 Democratic Party nomination on November 3, 1983.

Attending the 1984 Harvard symposium was Jackson's deputy campaign manager, Preston Love, and his political strategy adviser, Lamond Godwin. This was the first time that the symposium had included the staff of an African American presidential candidate. The discussion began with a question about the “actual decision of Reverend Jackson to run,” which set the stage for the next question: Why didn't the leading party candidates and members of the DNC try to talk him out of running, or offer him something else to do rather than run? Inherent in these questions were the old preoccupations with the “Black voter” (HUIP 1986, pp. 21–32).

Love and Godwin answered the group with a discussion of several factors that had prevented party leaders from attempting to dissuade Jackson from running. First was the voter registration problems uncovered during the Southern Crusade. Second was the other candidates' endorsements in Chicago's 1983 mayoral race, of which Godwin noted: “that, more than anything else, convinced us that we were in fact backed into a corner. It was not just Walter Mondale. It was Edward Kennedy as well…. In Chicago Kennedy came in and supported Jane Byrne. In Mondale's case, he supported Dick Daley. Harold Washington (African American candidate) had supported both of them every time they asked him to. But they did it anyway” (HUIP 1986, p. 23). The third factor was the actions of Democratic party leaders, such as Hamilton Jordan and Bert Lance, joined by DNC leader Robert Strauss, who were traveling around the country with solid presentations telling people that the Democratic Party had to move to the right. And finally, Mondale's people were trying to convince the Jackson people that if he ran, his showing would be so poor that it would not be worth the effort (HUIP 1986, p. 26).

Evolving out of this series of questions was the supposed opposition of the “Black leadership” to Jackson's candidacy. Such questions made it seem that Jackson was out of step with the wishes of his own community and was therefore an illegitimate candidate, and that the votes which Jackson received could have gone to the Democratic frontrunner. To these slick inquires, Love responded that “from a press standpoint, one of the things that we considered to be curious was the overemphasis on a very small number” of traditional Black leaders, “A handful of people became the summary of what Black leaders felt pro or against Reverend Jackson's running” (HUIP 1986, p. 31). Moreover, Love noted, Richard Hatcher, the mayor of Gary, Indiana, had conducted a national survey of 5200 Black leaders and eighty-five percent supported Jackson running.

The conversation then turned to the topic of what the conference volume called “Republicans, Blacks, and Voter Registration.” Robert Teeter, Senior Consultant and Marketing Director for Reagan-Bush, 1984, told the symposium that Jackson's candidacy served to “keep the Mondale people distracted long into the nominating process. And the less time they had before they could focus on the general election and on us, the more important that was.” He added that: “the whole idea of registration and turnout that the Democrats were talking about, and not only of Blacks…. That benefited us in the long run because it scared us into organizing and spending a lot of money on registration and turnout. That was a great benefit” (HUIP 1986, pp. 32–33). Teeter refused to acknowledge the fact that if it had worked, the Democrats would have had a chance for victory in 1984. But they did not respond to Jackson's request for voter registration; he had to go public with the idea.

Following these questions, the conference turned its attention to the Democratic primaries, discussing them as if Jackson and his attendees did not matter and were not present. This caused Love to jump into the discussion: “In all due respect, as I hear the analysis, I just want to remind you all that Jesse Jackson was in the campaign during this period of time and was a factor. I haven't heard any analysis that included Jackson in your polls, in your analysis of what was going on, that we were in the ball game and in particular on Super Tuesday…” (HUIP 1986, pp. 92–95). Jackson's campaign people now got a chance to talk. They explained that had Gary Hart's people made an alliance with them, they could have had an even greater impact on the primaries and could have significantly slowed the Mondale surge. They felt that the Hart people refused to develop an alliance with Jackson because they did not want to be tainted by Jackson's association with Minister Louis Farrakhan (HUIP 1986). Hence, there was no way for Jackson alone to have an impact on the outcome at the Democratic National Convention.

In the “Implication” section of the last chapter, the participants had nothing to say about the 1984 campaign, or about the role that an African American presidential candidate might play in the 1988 campaign. However, their preoccupation with the “Black voter” surfaced once again, and this time the Jackson attendees were asked to address it. Love told the audience that he was “uncomfortable” about the role that was given him. He told the audience that “the Black vote is in transition” and that it “may well be nonparty aligned in the future” (HUIP 1986, pp. 242–243). With these remarks the symposium ended its discussion of the 1984 presidential election. Here, Jackson's initial presidential candidacy suffered the same fate as the candidacy of Shirley Chisholm, in that it basically was left out of the dialogue except as it applied to the matter of the Black voter. The preoccupation with this overriding concern in the mind of the White campaign managers, senior advisors, and pollsters continued apace despite the presence of Love and Godwin and their efforts to steer the discussion to important party issues. No one at the 1984 symposium apparently foresaw the second coming of Jesse Jackson in 1988.

Attending the 1988 symposium were two of Jackson's campaign managers, Ronald H. Brown and Richard Hatcher, the former mayor of Gary, Indiana. Brown had served as the Deputy Campaign Manager of Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign against incumbent President Carter and had attended the 1980 symposium. Hatcher previously attended as a member of Jackson's 1984 campaign. Brown, however, was the first conference attendee to have worked with both a White presidential candidate and an African American candidate. Each man brought unique experience to Jackson's 1988 campaign. In his opening remarks, Hatcher made the point of how important these experiences were:

Hatcher offered insightful details into how well Jackson did in the primaries and where he lost the nomination in 1988. He noted wryly that: “no one expected Jesse Jackson to do anything in Iowa. No one expected him to do anything in New Hampshire. We did not disappoint anyone either in that regard” (HUIP 1989, p. 24). He continued:

Hatcher did not get another chance to speak at the symposium. It was Jackson's other attendee, Ronald Brown, who fielded the questions about the 1988 Jackson campaign that came to dominate the rest of the proceedings. The first issue was raised by the Dukakis campaign people, who felt that when the Democratic presidential primaries ended in June, Jackson launched a campaign to pressure the nominee, Dukakis, to give Jackson the vice-presidential position. Paul Brountas of the Dukakis campaign noted: “you recall that Jesse Jackson started his bus tour from Chicago to the Atlanta convention to mount momentum for his support at the convention. So we went into Atlanta with a lot of pressure and a lot of tension” (HUIP 1989, pp. 102–103). The Dukakis managers claimed that these tensions stole their media spotlight and left them little time to get ready for Bush and the general election.

The second issue arose not so much from the Dukakis campaign as it did from the media people. Moderator Howard Fineman posed the question: “Did the Dukakis campaign ask Jackson—I want to ask Susan (Estrich, Dukakis campaign manager) also—to quit his campaign, to stop his campaign and come aboard? Were there those kinds of discussions and when did they take place?” (HUIP 1989, p. 105). After an extended discussion, there arose something of a consensus that is quite revealing.

According to Marc Nuttle, campaign manager for Reverend Pat Robertson:

These arguments concluded with the suggestion that if the Democrats had managed Jackson and his supporters better, they would not have had pressures arising from his drive for the vice-presidential position. Thus, they would have had a better chance of running a more competitive campaign and possibly of winning the 1988 election. The symposium's advice to future campaigns thus was to better manage African American politicians and their base of supporters.

Before we close on the 1988 Jackson campaign, a word must be said about another discussion of race that arose during the symposium, but was not connected directly to the Jackson candidacy. This was the infamous “Willie Horton Ad” regarding the Massachusetts furlough program for jailed criminals. There was an extensive discussion, launched by the Dukakis campaign people, that this was a racist ad that played on people's fear and hatred of people of color. The harder they tried to get some small degree of acknowledgement from the Bush campaign people that the ad went too far and that they had ignored their responsibility with such an ad, the harder the Bush people resisted and declared that the ad had nothing to do with Black people. Every argument possible was made by the Bush team to show that they had done absolutely nothing wrong or unethical and that the Dukakis group was making an unwarranted interpretation of the ad (HUIP 1989).

Neither side seemed to see any connection between the ad and the Jackson campaign. However, the fear and hatred generated by the Horton ad showed up in the manner in which the Dukakis campaign tried to distance itself from him. At the Democratic Convention and afterward, Jackson was treated as if he had never run. Brown declared:

Brown added: “You are not happy when you lose, but the defeat in a lot of terms was not as devastating as it is now being painted. I think the pendulum is now beginning to swing back. And I look forward to 1992” (HUIP 1989, p. 278).

What one sees from the two Jackson presidential candidacies and from the perspectives generated by the campaign managers and senior advisors is not so much a forecast for such candidates, but rather a prediction for a continuation of the immense problems that these two campaigns caused the political parties, their nominees, and the White electorate. The implications from these top-level campaign operators are that they must better manage such an insurgent group of presidential leaders.

CAMPAIGN MANAGERS IN 1992, 1996, AND 2000: FORECASTS FROM DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN LOSERS

On September 13, 1990, African American Governor L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia announced that he would run in the 1992 Democratic primaries. Jesse Jackson declined to run again, leaving Wilder as the only African American candidate. Even though Wilder withdrew from the race on January 8, 1992 before the first primaries were held, his campaign manager and Chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, Paul Goldman, was invited to and participated in the Harvard symposium. Also attending the symposium was Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ronald Brown, who had been Jackson's campaign manager in 1988 and Senator Kennedy's deputy campaign manager in 1980.

Goldman told the attendees that Wilder's strategy was to skip the Iowa caucus, leaving it to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, and the New Hampshire primary, leaving it to Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas, and to concentrate on Super Tuesday, which was composed essentially of the southern primaries. As Goldman explained, “Super Tuesday would be important; we would have a national base, a real chance. So the strategy on that point was to get through Super Tuesday and go on to New York, hopefully as one of the three candidates. That was the way we thought the campaign would work out” (HUIP 1994, p. 6).

However, this was not to be. In March 1991, Governor Wilder claimed that Senator Chuck Robb had illegally taped some of his cell phone conversations. “In July, Robb announced the resignations of three of his top aides because of their involvement in recording those conversations” (HUIP 1994, p. 6). Governor Wilder's campaign never quite overcame the backlash from this exposure, especially in fundraising, and was forced to quit the race.

Chairman Brown told the symposium that he wanted to achieve a nomination early in the primary process and then use the national convention to launch the general election campaign rather than wait until the usual starting time around Labor Day (HUIP 1994). Brown felt that his success with that time line enabled Clinton to win over incumbent President George H. W. Bush. Although he made no forecast about the next African American nominee, Goldman's comment about the importance of Super Tuesday for Wilder had embedded in it the prediction that future African American presidential candidates would find this critical regional primary to be significant for any semblance of success.

Up to this point in the history of the Harvard symposium the African American candidates had all been Democrats. 1996 was the year of African American Republicans. Alan Keyes, former Republican senatorial candidate in Maryland and official in the Reagan Administration, announced on March 26, 1995 that he would seek the Republican Party's nomination. In November, General Colin Powell, also an African American, announced that he would not run for president nor accept a vice-presidential nomination. Thus, invited to the symposium were two of Keyes' campaign people, David Racer, his national campaign manager, and George Uribe, his senior political advisor. In addition, there were two “observers” there for General Powell; Chuck Kelly and Maggie Kelly.

Although Keyes was the candidate who ran in the primaries and caucuses, it was the non-candidate who drew the most interest. And it was Powell to whom Keyes was compared in the discussion. There are more sections in the 1996 symposium volume on Powell than there are on Keyes, and this attention influenced how Keyes' attendees responded to their questioners. Racer, the national campaign manager, told the audience that Keyes was the issue candidate, along with Phil Gramm and Pat Buchanan, and if Gramm had combined forces with Keyes, they could have blocked Robert Dole from getting the nomination at the Republican National Convention. This was Keyes' major strategy, but it failed. George Uribe put it thusly: “I believe that if Alan Keyes were to somehow merge a force, maybe with a Phil Gramm, where he had the money and we had the social issues or message, that somehow would have changed the national scene” (HUIP 1997, p. 71).

The other insight offered by the Keyes people was that he used some unusual tactics to garner media attention and proved successful at it. For example, Racer explained, when Keyes was locked out of the debates held at an Atlanta television station, he set up a “pup tent in which he … (placed) his body for the next twelve hours as a protest to being left out of the debate … the next day of course, Dr. Keyes was traveling all over the place doing all kinds of media … the phone just literally rang off the hook…. From that point on, he became a very, very hot prospect” (HUIP 1997, pp. 8–9). But that was not the case at the symposium.

Following the remarks about Keyes' campaign strategy, the book has a section entitled “The Phantom Candidate: Colin Powell,” that addresses how the outcome of the 1996 campaign would have changed, at both the primary and general election levels, had he gotten into the presidential race. In 1994 the Republicans had taken control of the House of Representatives for the first time in forty-four years, and Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House. Because of this dramatic political breakthrough, pundits and forecasters declared that the Republicans would probably take the presidency from the Democrats in 1996, which made the Republican primaries and caucuses of special concern. During the lengthy discussion of Powell, the Keyes people reacted by saying that “the one person who was able to confront Colin Powell without race being the issue would have been Alan Keyes … and Alan Keyes pretty much slammed him, based on the issues” (HUIP 1997, p. 66).

In other words, the Keyes people felt that the symposium was overstating Powell's stature and influence and understating Keyes' significance, and that Keyes would have run him out of the race. Apparently no one at the symposium believed that except the Keyes people. This is demonstrated in the book, which closes with a section entitled “The Powell Factor,” that notes how important he was in the general election. John Buckley, the Communications Director for nominees Robert Dole and Jack Kemp, said in this section: “every time we had Colin Powell anywhere near us we were guaranteed network coverage, which was something that we were not guaranteed on a daily basis” (HUIP 1997, p. 231). The book closes without even acknowledging the importance of the actual African American candidate in 1996, Alan Keyes. And there was no effort to forecast from his campaign.

Since no one even bothered to make forecasts related to Keyes' presidential bid, these individuals surely did not foresee his return run in 2000. On June 18, 1999, he announced the formation of an exploratory committee and shortly thereafter entered the Republican primaries and caucuses. On July 25, 2000, when Republican nominee George W. Bush announced that his running mate would be Dick Cheney, Keyes declared his support for this presidential ticket and noted that he would attend the Republican National Convention the following week. The 2000 Harvard symposium was attended by senior advisor Richard Ferrier, who told the audience of the nature and significance of Keyes' campaign strategy.

However, just as before, no movement for Keyes materialized in the primaries or the caucuses. According to Ferrier, although Keyes “won the Alabama straw poll, we were considerably aggrieved that the Black Republican winning in the heart of Dixie didn't get much press…. We wound up staying in and raising twice as much as we did last time; we got, I think, $13 or $14 million finally” (HUIP 2002, p. 120). Keyes did not win a single primary or caucus, or capture enough delegates to have any impact at the Republican National Convention. The symposium paid little attention to Keyes' second failed effort and did not forecast his third appearance in 2008 Republican primaries.

The other African American at the 2000 symposium was former Vice President Al Gore's campaign manager, Donna Brazile. Although her remarks were aimed at the strategy and tactics of Democratic presidential nominee Gore, at the end of the symposium she and other participants did address the problem of African American voter suppression and intimidation tactics in Florida. Her remarks about her own attempts at corrective actions and the need for reform in future presidential elections therefore spoke indirectly about problems that could possibly face other African American presidential candidates (HUIP 2002). These comments were as close to a forecast as one could get from the 2000 post-election conference.

From these three symposia of 1992, 1996, and 2000 we get some very interesting forecasts for future African American presidential candidates: (1) the South offers a natural base and constituency, (2) voter suppression and intimidation is a problem to prepare for and something to be overcome, and (3) a popular candidate of the stature of Colin Powell offers a party a chance for victory. While these insightful forecasts came only indirectly, they are nevertheless quite informative.

CAMPAIGN MANAGERS IN 2004 AND 2008: FORECAST FROM THE FAILURES AND THE WINNER

If 1988 had been the most successful African American presidential campaign, 2004 was the biggest failure. Reverend Al Sharpton, a New York civil rights activist, announced that he would be running for the Democratic presidential nomination in January 2003. Less than six weeks later, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and former U.S. Senator from Illinois Carol Moseley Braun set up her own exploratory committee. This was the first time that both an African American man and an African American woman were running simultaneously. However, in January 2004 Braun withdrew and announced her endorsement of the then frontrunner, Governor Howard Dean of Vermont.

Both Braun's campaign manager, Patricia Ireland, and Sharpton's campaign manager, Charles Halloran, participated in the 2004 post-election symposium. Also participating in this conference was media personality Gwen Ifill, moderator and managing editor of PBS's Washington Week news program. This was another breakthrough. The transcript does not show that Ifill questioned either Ireland or Halloran. However, the moderator of the opening session, Judy Woodruff of CNN's Inside Politics, asked both managers the same question:

Woodruff then asked both managers about their main rationale for running if they knew they could not win? Each responded in a similar fashion, that their candidate was in the race to “change the face of power in the country,” to raise important issues and to make the process more inclusive. These were the only questions put to Ireland and Halloran, and the only queries regarding these two campaigns.

Given that both campaigns ended in failure, nothing was drawn from them that provided implications for the future or possibilities for other such campaigns. There was no forecast. Failed campaigns seemingly had nothing of value for other potential campaigns. It was as if after the opening remarks these two campaigns became invisible. They simply dropped off of the intellectual radar and from the dialogue at this post-election symposium.

Then, in the very next election cycle, an African American Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama, won both the presidential primaries and caucuses and the general election to become the first of his race to be president of the United States of America. Five of his key campaign staff were invited to participate in the 2008 symposium: campaign manager David Plouffe, chief strategist David Axelrod, chief pollster Joel Benenson, senior advertising advisor Jim Margolis and senior advisor and chief communication officer Anita Dunn. This was Plouffe's second trip to the symposium; he had served as a senior political advisor to Congressman Richard Gephardt in the 2004 presidential campaign (HUIP 2006).

Central to the concern of this symposium was technology, in terms of the Internet and its impact on presidential elections. Race and gender took a back seat, as did the historic nature of the campaign and the election of the first African American president. Even the structural outline of the book emanating from the symposium reveals the huge importance of the technology issue vis-à-vis all of the other matters. However in the closing pages of the volume there was a brief section entitled “The Race Question.” Moderator John King of CNN stated: “I want to stop for a few minutes and spend a little time on this issue because anyone who reads this book down the road will think that we are idiots if we don't bring it up and discuss it—the race question” (HUIP 2009, p. 210). King wanted to know if Obama's race caused the other campaigns to change their strategies and tactics. The McCain campaign people responded that it caused them to be quite sensitive, so as not to look racist or be called racist: “None of us wanted John McCain to be in a position where he was being called racist … given John McCain's career and everything he had done….” (HUIP 2009, p. 211). McCain's chief strategist, Sarah Simmons, felt that perhaps the campaign was “overly sensitive to it … when Obama said that … I don't look like other presidents on the dollar bill,” adding that “it's not good to get into a racial debate when the people you are challenged with are young people” (HUIP 2009, p. 211).

With these remarks the race question was laid to rest and the symposium turned to the next issue: “the Electoral Map.” This section covered the change wrought by the Obama campaign in turning some red states to blue ones. The retort was that any Democrat might have won them, not just Obama.

It was finally left up to David Plouffe to talk about the nature, scope, and significance of the African American presidential candidate—something that this and other symposiums had missed or failed to understand. Plouffe noted: “you can have the machinery and if you don't have the magic, it is not going to matter. He inspired people. He brought new people in. I think there's going to be a lot of people, sadly, who will try and replicate what we did in 2008, and I think they are going to find some difficulty doing that” (HUIP 2009, p. 214).

The chief pollster for the Republican McCain campaign, Bill McInturff, did not see it as David Plouffe saw it. In fact, McInturff urged all at the symposium to see it as follows:

In other words, the audience at the symposium and the subsequent readers of the transcript were left with two forecasts: either the African American presidential candidate won the election or God chose this particular candidate for president. If it is the latter all of the other insights do not matter.

Looking back on all ten of the books in the Harvard series, what one finds is a scattered and incomplete portrait of forecasts and predictions by the campaign managers. Moreover, even these fragmented insights emerge only indirectly, and have to be teased out from the comments in the text. It seems that there existed an understanding that none of the African American candidates had a hint of a chance of being successful at either the primary or the general election levels. No one even remotely conjectured that one of these candidates would win a major party nomination. Thus, there was no need for a direct and candid discussion of such a possibility. Topics such as the issue of race and the voting behavior of the African American electorate were discussed but never the idea of a winning African American presidential nominee.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA BOOK SERIES ON CAMPAIGN MANAGERS

The Harvard symposium series pioneered the study of campaign managers and senior political advisors, and thereby established a specific model that covered both presidential primaries and caucuses and the general election. The Annenberg School of Communication, which launched its symposium series in 1992, developed a modified model of coverage of campaign managers and consultants for its book series. They did not publish their first transcript-based book until after the 2000 meeting, and thus have so far produced books covering only three election years: 2000, 2004, and 2008 (Jamieson Reference Jamieson2006, pp. vii–viii). From these volumes we find that they conceived their series as follows: (1) it focuses solely on the managers and consultants of the two major party candidates in the general election; (2) the findings from their “debriefing” by the managers are used in conjunction with the long-standing National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES) to explain and understand each of these presidential elections (NAES data is interspersed throughout the books); and (3) it allows academic political science scholars, not just nationally known journalists, to raise questions about the strengths and weaknesses of campaign strategies and tactics (Jamieson and Waldman, Reference Jamieson and Waldman2001; Jamieson Reference Jamieson2006).

The organizational structure of the 2000 book differs substantially from the 2004 and 2008 volumes. It is organized around individual managers and consultants whereas the later books are organized topically, with chapter titles such as Campaign Strategy, Advertising, Polling, Debates, and Press, and closes with chapters on Republican and Democratic expenditures (Jamieson Reference Jamieson2006, p. vii). These two latter topics are not covered specifically in the Harvard series, although they are discussed. The 2004 book makes the point about its continuity with the initial 2000 book by noting that “in some sense the 2004 election was a rematch between key consultants on each side, with Bob Shrum and Bill Knapp among those returning for the Democrats and Matthew Dowd, Mark McKinnon, and Alex Castellanos returning for the Republicans” (Jamieson and Waldman, Reference Jamieson and Waldman2001, pp. 63, 219, 224).Footnote ¹¹ Beyond the presence of these major party campaign people, scholars and a host of undergraduate students are represented.

Although the 2000 Democratic campaign included an African American campaign manager, Donna Brazile of the Gore team, she does not appear in the Table of Contents or on the list of participants in the 2000 Annenberg volume. However, Democrats Carter Eskew and Bob Shrum and Republican Karl Rove do mention her and the successful work that she did during the campaign (Jamieson and Waldman, Reference Jamieson and Waldman2001, p. 214). After this, the symposium turns to discussing the African American voter.

CAMPAIGN MANAGERS IN 2000 AND 2004: FORECASTS FROM THE INITIAL BOOKS

In the absence of Alan Keyes and his campaign people at the 2000 symposium, there was neither a discussion of his quest to secure the Republican nomination nor any speculation about future African American candidates. In addition, there was no discussion of past African American candidates, even phantom candidates such as Colin Powell. Moreover, even if Brazile had been present at the symposium, there was no chance that she could have provoked such a concern, given that she was manager for a White candidate. So the opportunity passed, but not without comments on the African American voter. Several of the managers, particularly Republican Karl Rove, noted the unusually high turnout of the African American electorate in this presidential election. He felt that they were motivated to do so because of the Republican-generated impeachment proceedings against President Clinton. Other than these insights, there were no forecasts about African American presidential candidates in 2004 or in 2008.

At the 2004 symposium, none of the campaign people for Carol Moseley Braun or Al Sharpton were invited, and no discussion of these campaigns surfaced. Nor did a generic discussion of a potential African American presidential candidate occur. These two campaigns, like Keyes' campaign, failed badly in demonstrating that such campaigns were viable. Once again there was some discussion of the perennial issue of the African American electorate. There were brief discussions from Republican managers about their party winning a higher voting percentage from the African American community. The Democratic managers spoke about the fact that “our party has traditionally focused on African American advertising late in the campaign, in the closing weeks, as essentially a get-out-the-vote message” (Jamieson Reference Jamieson2006, p. 214). However, in the 2004 election that approach had to change for the demographic “between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five” because prolonged communication with this group was needed (Ifill, Reference Ifill2009). However, these insights do not comprise forecasting.

The managers from the winning Obama campaign were in attendance at the 2008 symposium. There, they discussed in detail their tactics and strategies for winning against Republican nominee John McCain. This was not a retrospective look at previous African American presidential campaigns, nor was some type of linkage made. Nevertheless, this volume, like the 2000 and 2004 volumes, did have a series of discussions on the African American voter, which is a perpetual staple of both of these campaign manager book series. In the 2008 book, there is a fairly long discussion about the impact and influence of Senator Obama's caucus victory in Iowa and how it switched the African American voters from Senator Clinton to Obama's campaign (Plouffe, Reference Plouffe2009). Yet none of the discussions in this volume address the question as to why none of the previous symposium books forecasted the coming of Obama's electoral juggernaut and victory.

Secondly, although five of Obama's campaign people were present at this symposium, none of them were African Americans despite the fact that this was indeed a very historic election. And while it was true that there were no African Americans in his inner circle of advisors, there were still some on the team. In this instance, the Pennsylvania invitees followed the Harvard invitees and showed no sensitivity about the nature of this historic campaign and candidate.

Finally, the organizational structure of the 2008 volume is somewhat different from that of the 2004 volume. While they both have chapters on: (1) campaign organization and strategy, (2) polling, (3) advertising, and (4) the press, the 2004 volume has seven chapters and the 2008 volume has nine chapters. Five chapters of the 2008 volume cover completely different topics. In spite of the differences in the 2008 volume, in terms of the insights and findings that emanate from the campaign managers and advisors, there is much greater detail and coverage in Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe's new book on this historic election (Plouffe Reference Plouffe2009).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Collectively, these two book series on the post-election perspectives of campaign managers, senior political advisors, and consultants have not generated any direct forecasts or predictions about the rise and evolution of African American presidential candidates. This is the case for the years in which there were African American campaign managers or advisors for African American presidential candidates as well as the years in which there were White campaign managers for African American presidential candidates and the years in which there were African American campaign managers for White presidential candidates. The one African American presidential success story came in 2008, when all of Senator Barack Obama's top-level managers and advisors were White.

Both a southerner (Jimmy Carter) and later a northerner (Edward Kennedy) pioneered by becoming the first White candidates to appoint an African American as a deputy campaign manager. Jesse Jackson similarly broke a barrier by having a White political advisor, and in 1992 Douglas Wilder became the first African American to have a White campaign manager. This was the same year in which the DNC appointed Ronald Brown as its chairman, based at least in part upon his performance as Jackson's campaign manager in 1988. African American Republican candidate Keyes continued the tradition via his appointment of White managers in 1996 and 2000 as did Democratic candidates in 2004 and 2008. In 2000 the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, broke ground with his appointment of Donna Brazile as his campaign manager, the first time either an African American or a woman had held such a position for a major party nominee.

Although Shirley Chisholm had none of her campaign people invited to the inaugural Harvard symposium in 1972, African American Ronald Brown attended three of the Harvard symposia—one as deputy campaign manager, one as campaign manager, and one as Chairman of the DNC. In fact, having been Jackson's campaign manager led to Brown being made Chairman of the DNC.

In terms of party affiliation, all six of the African American campaign managers and advisors have been Democrats. Alan Keyes, the sole African American Republican candidate in these ten elections, saw three of his White managers and consultants invited to attend the symposia. There have been twelve White managers, advisors, and observers (counting the Kelleys) and yet only three have worked for a Republican candidate. When one combines African American individuals who worked for African American and White Democratic candidates, the total number rises to fifteen. Clearly, African Americans have been getting political experience primarily through the Democratic Party. Before 2008, the only African American manager or deputy manager who had worked with a successful Democratic nominee was Benjamin D. Brown in the 1976 Carter campaign.

Table 2 provides data on the two African American journalists who participated in these symposia, Carol Simpson from ABC News and Gwendolyn Ifill from PBS. Ifill has attended all four symposia since 1996. Despite the fact that Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for reporting on the Obama candidacy and campaign, he was not a participant at either of the two symposia, nor was Bob Herbert of The New York Times. It is possible that their participation in future symposia might generate some revised thinking about African American presidential candidates. Clearly, after the 2008 campaign, given the success of the Obama campaign managers and advisors, moderators might reflect more centrally on the potential of this group of presidential candidates (Ifill Reference Ifill2009). One would then not have to rely exclusively on a group of campaign managers, who are preoccupied with African American voters, in order to forecast African American presidential candidates.

Table 2.

The African American Media Participants and Observers at the Symposia on Presidential Campaign Management

Source: Adapted from the ten books Campaign for President: The Managers Look at 1972–2008 and the three books Electing the President, 2000, 2004 and 2008: The Insiders' View (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001, 2006 & 2009).

Prior to the election of Barack Obama, the managers, advisors and consultants at both schools' symposia offered up only indirect insights which were incomplete and unsystematic. The few brief remarks concerning the potential of an African American bid for the presidency found in each volume have been derivative at best, for their concern has been with the tactics and strategies of White nominees, and with any race-relations issues that have arisen during their campaigns. But future elections will provide the intellectual opportunities to recast such forecasts and predictions with more focus on the prospects of African American candidates.