The Role Of Ideology For African American Candidates In Statewide Elections.

Of those articles that have been written about African-Americans running for governor or the U.S. Senate, there is a shift away from the focus on race and the use of racial cues, and a greater interest in other qualities of the candidate, such as the African-American's ideology. But until now, few have been able to test such a proposition, due to the dearth of available information on the subject, and the limited number of African-Americans choosing to run in such contests.I seek to overcome both problems in my conference submission "The Role Of Ideology For African American Candidates In Statewide Elections" by focusing on African-Americans who served in the House of Representatives before they ran for higher political office. Though they only represent a subset of all such candidates, data exists for them on their ideology based upon voting scores coded by the American Conservative Union (ACU). In this way, we can conduct a test on the role of ideology upon elections.Evidence shows that when an African American congressional candidate runs for governor or senator, he or she is likely to have a much closer contest if his or her ideology is closer to the political center, confirming the results of several speculative studies. Candidates with a more liberal voting record are more likely to be targeted for their past position on the issues as contests become a little more "post-racial," as some traditional attempts at cues are thankfully beginning to backfire. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]