Ramblings' Journal

Crossing over for most blacks is a matter of discovery

Willie Talton, chief deputy of Houston County in Middle Georgia, is unopposed in his run for the Georgia House as a Republican.

Most blacks who leave the Democratic plantation and vote Republican do so after they finally get sick and tired of their treatment overall.

"I have voted for lots of Democrats," says 60 year old Willie L. Talton, of Warner Robins, chief deputy sheriff of Houston County. "But in the last two or three years, I have been an independent voter. And as you start voting, you start learning things. I realized all of the candidates I was voting for were Republicans, so I started watching them and I started attending meetings. It seemed like it was the party of opportunities and very family-oriented. That attracted me."

In January, Talton will be sworn as a black Republican member of the Georgia House of Representatives.

Other black Republican candidates are looking to join Talton, like 30 year-old Nick Chester of Mableton (a friend of mine who lives nearby).

"I wish I could tell you that being a black Republican for me was some sort of epic adventure, but the truth is, it is not," says Chester, the son of a career military family who spent eight years in the military himself before settling with his wife, Donna, in Cobb.

"Most African-Americans are naturally conservatives," he says. "I believe in smaller, more efficient government and I believe in the traditional family as defined as one man and one woman. I am a Bible-based Christian . . . I trust that the people, when given the opportunity, make the best decisions, not the government."

"I often tell my African-American friends that we believe in the same things, except I belong to the party that cares about those things," says Chester, who is running in House District 33 against white incumbent Democrat Don Wix. The district is 31 percent black with a Republican base of about 43 percent.

Both Chester and Talton have found that blacks, as a whole, do not bolt from one party to another. The process is far more gradual. One of discovery. One which happens when an individual realizes that his core values are more in tune with conservatives than with liberals. Posted by mhking at May 10, 2004 08:01 PM