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University Daily Kansan Wednesday, March 24, 1965
Republican Stresses Worth of Negro Vote
The Republican Party is in bad shape according to James E. Woodson, an attorney and former vice-chairman of the Kansas Republican State Committee.
In his talk yesterday at the meeting of the KU Collegiate Young Republicans, Woodson spoke on the "Future of the Republican Party with special emphasis on the role of the Negro Republicans."
By Harhar Krishnan
Today only one out of every four Americans considers himself a Republican compared to 38 per cent in 1940 and 30 per cent in 1960, Woodson said.
WOODSON WAS A delegate to the 1964 Republican National Convention at San Francisco, where he seconded the nomination of Michigan Governor George Romney for President. In recent months he has worked as a founder and member of the Executive Board of the National Negro Republican Assembly.
Speaking on the 1964 election, Woodson said that the principle cause of the disastrous defeat of the Goldwater organization was based on their assumption that the old Democratic coalition formed by Franklin D. Roosevelt was disintegrating and that the new conservative consensus had the potential strength to replace it.
"Senator Goldwater, the popular head of the conservative movement, was the logical candidate for a successful appeal to the potential conservative majority." Woodson said. The only problem, he said, was that all their assumptions were proved wrong.
"In their passion for purity they neglected the fundamental law of political leadership, the need to respect the complexities and diversities of a great national party," Woodson said. "As one journalist wrote, their campaign was one of the most inept and unprofessional campaigns in the American political history," he said.
THE MOST SERIOUS flaw in the Goldwater campaign, Woodson continued, was the supposition that the Negro vote could be written off. "The Republican Party had held strong Negro support for 30 years after Roosevelt's victory in 1932," Woodson said. "In 1964, under Goldwater-Miller, the Republican share of the nonwhite presidential vote dropped to 6 per cent compared to that of 39 per cent during the Eisenhower regime."
Speaking on the importance of the Negro vote, Woodson said, "The four states of Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee and Virginia clearly would have gone Republican had it not been for the Negro vote. Why this change? I will state that all polls and political experts agree that Senator Goldwater's position on Civil Rights alienated more voters than did his position on any other domestic issue," he said.
In maintaining the white backlash strategy the Republican leadership gradually excluded all Negroes from leadership and from policy making positions, Woodson said. "The minorities division was dissolved and the Goldwater-Miller-Burch campaign proceeded without any significant Negro participation."
The Goldwater-Miller 6 per cent not only doomed Republican hopes for Presidential victory, Woodson said, but also was fatal to many local Republicans who went down under straight ticket Democratic voting.
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