Representative Corrine Brown is one of the poorest members of Congress. Surrounded by functioning millionaires, Brown has no assets and a net worth of $-0.46 million. While Brown isn’t necessarily hurting for money, she’s not sitting in a pool of it either.
Brown’s lack of wealth provides color to a federal court’s decision on Monday regarding her lawsuit to have a new district re-drawn in North Florida. Brown argued that the newly drawn district that she may or may not represent come election time isn’t fair enough for black voters.
Congresswoman Corrine Brown/Photo courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel
In response, a federal court said that what’s likely to happen in the new district is that a “black-preferred candidate will prevail and in Congressional District 10 (an area that takes in some of Orlando) the black-preferred candidate will likely prevail more often than not.”
In writing an opinion on a case (Shelby County v. Holder) that challenged the merits of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that America has changed and that “extraordinary measures to address an extraordinary problem” were no longer needed.
In essence, racism is no longer an extraordinary problem, hence why it’s ok that Brown’s district and District 10 are diluted.
District 10 has evoked a nice number of minority candidates. Former Orlando Police Chief Val Demings is in as well as Florida state Senator Geraldine Thompson and attorney Fatima Rita Fahmy.
Then there’s Bob Poe, former boss of the Florida Democratic Party and businessman, who is running and recently lent his campaign a haul of $1.2 million.
While Poe is a minority in a race full of minorities, his move to pump money into his campaign inadvertently proves Brown’s point that diluting a district with a strong black population will hurt current and future black candidates.
Poe is a self-proclaimed entrepreneur who has access to wealth, a luxury many black candidates do not have.
During Brown’s last re-election campaign, she raised $638k and spent more than that. Her harvest would have been much higher if she would have had a tougher opponent, but the point remains that black and brown candidates aren’t privileged or rich enough to tap into the type of money needed to run in competitive races.
Black Wealth
According to information from the Pew Research Center, black wealth is a misnomer because it doesn’t exist. White households have 13 times more wealth than black ones. In 2013, white median wealth was a healthy $141,900 while the number for blacks was just $11,000.
Simply put: black people do not have access to money, which means that black candidates are less likely to have the ability to pull from personal income for start-up funds for a political campaign.
Even candidates who are college educated aren’t privy to more money. Black college graduates have a median family net worth of just $32,780 compared to that of white families which is $359,928.
Black people have a higher debt-to-income ratio than any other group and black families with college graduates saw a decrease of 55 percent in real net worth from 1992 to 2013.
African-Americans are broke, and with the onslaught of money being poured into political campaigns, having a financial reserve to tap into is essential.
Campaign Money
Back in 2000, The Center for Public Integrity studied how much money flows into the campaign coffers of black candidates and the findings were interesting. In June of 2000 there was more than $1 billion raised for Congressional candidates, but just $11.7 million went to black candidates.
Fast forward to 2014 and there still isn’t a solution to the problem. A study by U.S. PIRG found that donors who inject large amounts of money in political campaigns permeate credible candidates.
Those candidates aren’t usually funded equally, have narrow pathways to attain more money, and generally support political ideas that support the underclass.
It is a system controlled by the wealthiest our nation has to offer.
The study also found that a House candidate running for election in 2014 needed to raise $1,800 per day to remain competitive. Compounding the issue is that rich donors flock to races that are competitive and “candidates in these races raised the overwhelming majority of their contributions from large donors.”
These numbers prove that black candidates remain at a disadvantage. There are just 44 black House members and two in the Senate. The black officials serving in the House are likely representing racially gerrymandered districts.
Without those districts drawn to give a needed advantage to black candidates, there would be less than 46 serving in the House.
There’s also the factor of how party establishments, specifically the Democratic Party, helps candidates of color.
By way of a 2015 Politico story, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has had issues with the Congressional Black Caucus due to “[t]he campaign arm hasn’t spent enough to reelect their incumbents or elect new African-Americans… [b]lack lawmakers who represent lower-income districts have a harder time raising money. And the DCCC has long faced criticism for awarding few contracts to minority-owned political firms.”
This all provides context to Brown’s anger, as well as those who supported her fight. Black candidates need assistance as the deck is stacked so high against them.
Poe’s ability to write a check to his campaign worth more than the personal wealth of a number of black candidates and elected officials to make up ground lost because he filed later than the other candidates is…well, yeah. Districts that are racially gerrymandered are supposed to be advantageous to black candidates, and money should be factored into that equation.
But the financial health of black candidates isn’t, and with more money being added to politics on a daily basis–and rich candidates deciding to run–Chief Justice John Roberts and those who feature his train of thought have finally crafted the racial utopia they’ve envisioned: to stall out black candidates from the political process.
