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23 General Election, 1992 It would have been perfectly normal for the general election of 1992, coming ten weeks after the energetic and emotional Democratic primary, to seem anticlimactic. As it turned out, it was. I learned what I needed to know about my opponent early in the campaign. As I was driving into Florence one day along Evans Street, I noticed the car in front of me had a decal of the official flag of the Confederacy on its bumper. Few people recognize the “real” Confederate flag, which has a circle of stars on a blue field in the upper left corner, and three bars, one white, and two red, hence the nickname for the flag, “Stars and Bars.” This flag is far less recognizable to the general public than the “Navy Jack” that flew atop the State House. Anyone whose bumper bears the decal of the official flag of the Confederacy, I figured, is a full-time southerner who probably takes the state’s history and all things southern seriously and personally. As we approached the intersection the traffic light turned red, and we pulled alongside the car with the Confederate flag decal. I looked over, and much to my surprise, the driver was John Chase, my Republican opponent in the general election. At that moment, I knew that whatever race baiting he would employ in the campaign against me ran much deeper than a tactic to get white votes in the general election. The election campaign turned out to run pretty much along those lines. Mr. Chase rarely brought up an issue that did not have a direct racial angle, or one that was only slightly disguised. Unlike the primary race, in which my four opponents and I shared some basic values, this contest was run against an opponent with whom I rarely even made philosophical or political contact. His positions were a throwback to the days when race dictated the issues, and he was apparently satisfied to make that distinction his campaign platform. He believed, I guessed, there was a sufficiently large reservoir of ill will over race that he could wave his Confederate flag, mutter a few code words, raise a few wedge issues, and drive me into a defensive position. I decided not to take the bait. My margin of victory had been a comfortable one in the primary, and I was satisfied that, while I would not carry a majority of the white vote, I would do well enough with white voters to feel politically secure and confident. It was my plan to win enough white votes to go to Washington legitimately representing more of the district than the 58 percent with whom I shared a racial identity. I stuck with my game plan. General Election, 1992 207 One of the early opportunities to engage in combat was Mr. Chase’s decision to attack me on the food-stamp issue. Food stamps always seem to offer a field day for those who wished to belittle black and low-income people and, in this case, a black candidate. Somehow, despite evidence to the contrary, the stereotype lingers that only black people used food stamps, and Mr. “Confederate Flag” just couldn’t resist the temptation. He aired a television ad attacking a proposal I had made for issuing Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards, rather than the traditional paper coupons, for food-stamp recipients to use at the checkout counter. Mr. Chase’s ad showed a distorted picture of me superimposed over an American Express card and claimed that I wanted to give every food-stamp user a credit card. It was so over-the-top and racially mean-spirited that several television stations refused to air it. Of course some did. My proposal had nothing to do with providing “credit” for food-stamp users. It simply offered an easier, less costly, and more efficient way for qualified recipients to use whatever food-stamp value would have been issued to them anyhow, and it was a damn sight easier for supermarket checkout personnel to use, as is now the case. As far as potential fraud and cheating were concerned, it provided a much cleaner way to assure the integrity and accountability of the Food Stamp program itself. Of course, in the world of sound-bite racial politics, all that reasoning got swept up in the emotion of abusing black people. Blaming the Poor People I actually did have an ax to grind along those lines. In...

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