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ST. LOUIS Sgt. Brad Sevier usually patrols an area of Missouri where there is one farm for every 20 residents. Now the Missouri state trooper commutes an hour to patrol the big city.

On orders from Republican Gov. Eric Greitens, Sevier and about two dozen troopers have laid claim to St. Louis highways that slice through some of Americas most dangerous neighborhoods, a move that has sparked concern among residents wary of heavy policing. Its the first time in decades that state troopers have patrolled the city, Greitens said.

We are looking for anything, Sevier said shortly before pulling over a motorist for an expired license plate near downtown. I dont see how it can be detrimental having more law enforcement in an area that really needs more policing.

Greitens dispatched the Missouri Highway Patrol last month amid a surge in shootings and assaults in St. Louis, part of a nationwide trend of rising violence in some large cities. The killings have rattled neighborhoods and embarrassed city officials, who tend to be Democrats. But now governors who tend to be Republicans are sending in their troops to fight urban crime, reopening historical tensions.

The governors actions mirror President Trumps vow to send in federal agents to curb crime in Chicago, which he said in June had reached epic proportions.

Today, we declare that the days of ignoring this problem are done, said Greitens, a former Navy SEAL and competitive boxer, announcing his plan last month to send in state patrolmen to look for criminals in St. Louis. We are rolling up our sleeves and taking strong action to protect people.

Lyda Krewson, the new Democratic mayor of St. Louis, has fierce political disagreements with Greitens on many issues, including gun control and the funding of social services. But Krewson also has an intimate perspective of the citys crime problem: In 1995, she saw her husband fatally shot during an attempted carjacking in front of their home in the citys West End.

Krewson supports Greitenss plan.

There are a lot of guns on these highways. There are a lot of drugs on these highways, Krewson said. As long as its done in a responsible way and I dont have any reason to believe it wont be I think its a good help.

But in an era of increasingly polarized views on policing, Missouris intervention is unsettling some local residents who question the governors strategies and tone. How elected leaders define a gang, use the word criminal and deputize outside law enforcement agencies are emerging as flash points. The debate threatens to drive another wedge between some officials in heavily Democratic cities and GOP leaders in statehouses and in Washington.

He was heard saying ... Lets go get them, said state Rep. Michael Butler, a St. Louis Democrat who was referring to an offhand, salutatory remark Greitens made while rallying Missouri troopers. A lot of folks wonder who them is, and what exactly did he mean.

St. Louis has recorded more than 110 homicides so far this year, which, as of late July, put 2017 on pace to be the citys deadliest year in more than two decades. The trends have been similar in big cities from Baltimore and Nashville to Tulsa and Little Rock, and in response, governors are reviving a role many had embraced from the 1960s through the early 1990s but pulled back from as homicide rates declined.

Last month, after 25 people were shot in a nightclub not far from the governors mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson organized state troopers and FBI agents to respond to a looming cloud of violence in that city.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott pledged in spring to use all lawful means to snuff out what he called a serious gang problem in Houston, the states largest city.

In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster even used warlike language when announcing his plan for more state resources in Myrtle Beach, where homicides in June threatened the citys reputation as a family-friendly beach destination.

There will be a lot more boots on the ground, McMaster said in deploying state troopers.

The governors are all Republicans, and their actions come as Trump has used tough-on-crime rhetoric in response to law enforcement concerns, most recently telling officers in a speech not to be too nice to suspects. Jim Pasco, past executive director and current senior adviser to the president of the National Fraternal Order of Police, said GOP governors know that crime has been a good issue for Trump.

It resonates with the people who elected him, said Pasco. The governors see the reaction he is getting, and it spurs them to action.

But the implementation of the state response can clash with local policing strategies. Some on the left fear a shift away from Obama-era initiatives such as community policing, fewer mandatory minimum sentences and limits on the militarization of police units.

The tension is particularly pronounced in St. Louis, where the 311,000 residents are still navigating the aftermath of the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a close-in suburb.

For now, Greitenss proposal is fairly limited. For the first time in decades, Missouri state troopers will patrol four major highways in St. Louis, freeing up city police to focus on violent crime that has driven up the homicide rate.

After seven people were fatally shot here over Fathers Day weekend, Greitens decided it was time to act, despite accusations from the community that he is grandstanding to bolster his macho political image.

During his campaign last year, Greitens shocked pundits by airing television commercials showing him firing military-style assault rifles. His ads included him saying he was going to take back Missouri and fire away for reforms.

Shortly after he was elected, Greitens experienced St. Louiss crime woes personally when his wife was robbed at gunpoint as she left a restaurant.

We go out and do what is necessary to save lives, Greitens, an Iraq War veteran and Purple Heart recipient, said in an interview. This is tearing cities apart.

His critics, however, accuse Greitens of using St. Louis as a punching bag by vilifying a city that is about 50 percent African American and has a 25 percent poverty rate.

You got a governor who is probably looking to his next move, so he has got to play to his base, said Sarah Wood Martin, a St. Louis alderwoman. And to them, it looks nice sending in the state troopers to get control of what is made to look like an out-of-control urban area.

Beside politics, activists say there is real fear that Greitenss plan could lead to more racial profiling. African Americans in Missouri are already 75 percent more likely to be stopped while driving than white motorists, according to the data compiled by the state attorney generals office.

Until and unless we start talking about that, there is a concern we are going to get more of the same, said Jeffrey A. Mittman, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, which is seeking state records clarifying how the enhanced state patrols will be carried out.

While looking for expired license plates, unregistered vehicles or speed violators, Sevier stopped a white woman who was arrested for an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court on a previous traffic citation.

Traffic enforcement is a good tool in finding criminals, said Sevier, who had been assigned to Perry County in Missouris southern river delta. That lady was wanted for expired registration but it just as easily could have been a murder warrant or a robbery warrant.

During the first 11 days of the state patrols on about 16 miles of interstate highways that had been only lightly patrolled before, troopers issued more than 900 traffic tickets and made 220 arrests, according to Missouri Highway Patrol data.

St. Louis resident Danielle Shanklin panned Greitenss plan. Her 25-year-old sister, Sigaria, was fatally shot in the head last summer when gunmen opened fire on a car she was in. Shanklins 3-year-old son, who was riding in the back seat, was unharmed.

Greitenss initiative, she said, is nothing more than a way to give out more tickets for speeding.

What they need do is add more funding to do things in the community, Shanklin said, reflecting a widely held view in St. Louis that Greitens cant fight crime and cut spending on social programs at the same time.

That community reaction, both here and in other cities targeted by governors, is putting mayors in a bind as they decide whether to embrace the help and, if so, how publicly.

In Arkansas, Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola (D) supported Hutchinsons plan but followed up on the governors announcement with his own one-hour news conference to call for more investment in inmate reentry programs, job training and neighborhood redevelopment.

We know we cannot arrest our way out of this problem, Stodola said.

Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Police Chiefs Association, said the true test of the governors initiatives will come in a few months.

The real problem with this is usually the states cant stay very long, said Stephens, noting states limited budgets as well. And to be effective at policing locally, you just cant jump in and then take off two or three months later.

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With rising homicides in big cities, Republican governors intensify police patrols - Washington Post

A Republican senator on the Senate Judiciary Committee told ABC News on Sunday that he is not sure he agrees with President Donald Trump's dismissal of the Russia investigation as a "witch hunt."

ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. Thom Tillis on "This Week" Sunday if he agrees with the presidents recent statement that "the entire Russia story [is] a fabrication, a witch hunt and a hoax."

I'm not sure that I agree with the witch hunt, and we'll let the facts lead us to whether or not it was a hoax, the North Carolina senator said. But we are where we are, and I want to see this investigation concluded so that we can get onto doing the good work the president has already started with regulatory reform, health care and tax reform.

Tillis and a Democratic colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chris Coons of Delaware, have introduced legislation aimed at protecting the role of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in leading the Russia investigation. The bill, called the Special Counsel Integrity Act, would allow any special counsel terminated from their position to challenge the firing before a three-judge panel.

It is in everyone's best interest for Bob Mueller to be able to carry forward this investigation to its conclusion, so that we can get back to working in a responsible and bipartisan way. Tillis said.

Coons added, "If the president should fire Robert Mueller abruptly, that would be crossing a big line."

The Delaware Democrat said that if Mueller was terminated, "I think you would see strong bipartisan action from the Senate, which might include our reinstating him or our rehiring him to continue to conduct that investigation on behalf of Congress."

We've already heard strong interest from colleagues on both sides of the aisle in supporting this legislation, said Coons. I think this is also an important bipartisan effort that may shore up the rule of law and the separation of powers, and may ultimately get passed.

Tillis said the bill is important for protecting the long-term independence of the Department of Justice. This is something that lives beyond this special counsel, he said.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., also introduced a bipartisan bill aimed at protecting Muellers job as special counsel. Their legislation would block the president from firing a special counsel without approval from a federal judge.

Original post:
Republican senator unsure he agrees with Trump that Russia probe is 'witch hunt' - ABC News

DENVER A free market guy like the Independence Institutes Jon Caldara normally doesnt have much in common with progressives, except when it comes to ballot measures.

Liberal activists are furious after spending millions of dollars to pass left-wing ballot initiatives in November in states such as Oklahoma, Maine and South Dakota, only to see Republican lawmakers use their legislative muscle to gut, modify or outright repeal them this year.

Mr. Caldara feels their pain. A frequent sponsor of right-tilting ballot measures in Colorado, he has watched for years as Democratic state legislators chip away at a conservative favorite: the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, passed by voters in 1992.

The coup de grace came in June, when the Colorado state legislature voted to levy a charge on hospitals without putting the issue on the ballot, even though the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, also known as TABOR, requires all tax increases to go before the voters.

There is no better poster child for the political system destroying an initiative by the citizenry, said Mr. Caldara. Let me say it really clear: TABOR is dead. The Taxpayer Bill of Rights, for all intents and purposes, is dead in Colorado.

In other words, the left now is learning the hard way what the right has long known: Just because the voters pass a ballot proposal doesnt mean the state legislature wont fight it.

For years, state ballot measures were the go-to mechanism for conservatives shut out of the lawmaking process by Democrats. But with Republicans in control of 32 state legislatures 33 with the nonpartisan Nebraska unicameral the citizen initiative process increasingly has morphed into a tool of the left.

Seventy-six initiatives appeared on U.S. ballots in November, the highest number in more than a decade, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts Stateline blog, and many were from the left, including minimum wage increases, tax hikes and criminal justice reforms.

Justine Sarver, executive director of the liberal Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, cited 2016 progressive ballot triumphs on raising the minimum wage in four states, increasing taxes in two and providing workers with mandatory sick leave in two states. She predicted those wins are only the beginning.

At BISC we are already more than one year into a multi-year, multi-state, proactive strategy, Roadmap to 2020, which will put measures on the ballot to address economic inequalities and expand access to democracy nationwide, Ms. Sarver said in a January press release.

In Maine, voters approved a marijuana legalization initiative as well as three left-wing measures an overhaul of the election system, a tipped minimum wage hike and a 3 percent income tax increase for top earners but the euphoria for the winners was short-lived.

No sooner had the Legislature convened than Republicans took on the measures, repealing the income tax hike, watering down the minimum wage law with the support of restaurant servers who feared it would reduce their incomes and securing a statement from the Maine Supreme Court indicating that swaths of the ranked-choice voting system were unconstitutional.

Ironically, the progressive ballot victories came even as Republicans gained ground in the Maine Legislature.

Its a result of the frustration that they have that they cant get these bad policies through the Legislature because we have a governor who will veto destructive policies, said Jason Savage, Maine Republican Party executive director. Instead, theyre just going directly to the ballot to pass their utopian ideas and not even trying anymore.

Will of the voters

The Republican Partys dismantling came at a price. In July, Maine Gov. Paul LePage briefly declared a partial government shutdown as lawmakers wrestled with headaches triggered by the passage of the measures, which dominated the legislative session.

It puts us in a defensive posture defending taxpayers, defending peoples freedom, defending the Constitution, said Mr. Savage. It would be a lot nicer for Republicans to talk about the policies that they think would help people instead of undoing policies that are hurting the economy or violating the Constitution.

There is no end in sight: Maine progressives already have placed an initiative on the November ballot to fund an expansion of Medicaid.

While Maine may represent the most extreme example of progressive ballot activism in Republican-dominated political territory, the Pine Tree State isnt alone.

In South Dakota, Republican Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed in January a repeal of Initiated Measure 22, a campaign finance proposal passed two months earlier with pressure from a liberal Massachusetts advocacy group, after a court found it unconstitutional.

In Oklahoma, two ballot measures backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and approved in November were promptly met by Republican-sponsored repeal legislation. The bills failed, and the initiatives to reduce certain drug and property crimes to misdemeanors took effect July 1.

Progressives who have rallied behind efforts to shift their focus to the ballot initiative have decried Republican efforts to derail the measures, which include moves by state legislatures to make qualifying for the ballot more difficult.

What all these attacks have in common is a blatant contempt for the will of the voters, said Ms. Sarver. Conservatives disregard for ballot measures is especially hypocritical because they were once an important political tool for them.

Of course, conservatives also have had their best-laid ballot measures upended by Democrats. Exhibit A is same-sex marriage.

Voters in California approved same-sex marriage bans twice, in 2000 and 2008. The first time, the Democrat-controlled State Legislature voted to repeal the measure, only to have Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger veto it.

As attorney general, Jerry Brown refused to defend the traditional marriage initiative in response to a lawsuit, forcing the measures sponsors to hire private counsel. The legal challenge ultimately prevailed.

In the case of marijuana legalization, Democratic and Republican legislators in several states essentially have deferred the decision to voters. But on other issues, there is often a reason a proposal has not cleared the legislative process.

Generally speaking, its true that if the legislature thought it was a good idea, they would have done it already, said Craig Burnett, Hofstra University political science professor. Almost every policy proposed by initiative is almost by construction out of sync with what the legislature wants. If they really wanted it, they could have done it already.

That means passing the ballot initiative is only the first step. The real work begins afterward, Mr. Caldara said.

It all goes back to [Thomas] Jefferson saying the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Thats what this is, he said. Its not a victory until you secure and defend it year after year. Because they will find a way.

Original post:
With Republican turnaround, state legislatures now foil liberal ballot measures - Washington Times

RENSSELAER, N.Y. >> Three candidates will be running in the primary election to become the next mayor of Rensselaer.

Incumbent Democrat Daniel Dwyer will be running to keep the part-time position that he has had since being elected in 2006. However, Dwyer will have at least two Republican candidates trying to take his seat in November: Republican Carl Gottstein Jr. and the Republican Committee endorsed candidate is Jim Konstantakis.

Gottstein, 52, recently said that he wanted to run for mayor this year because he feels that the city has been in auto-pilot for many years, while Dwyer, 82, recently that he wanted to run again, so that he can finish things up that his administration has been working on.

Konstantakis, 67, said he officially announced that he was going to run as the endorsed Republican candidate after speaking to some people in the Republican Committee earlier in the year because he feels there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed in the city.

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I wanted to help restore the citys image; police are without a contract, ambulance services stopped, we used to have five or six fire companies in the city and I think we have two now, he said. These are the people who serve and protect us and risk their lives for us every day. We have to look into getting them a fair and equitable contract in a more timely fashion. They have families to feed, too.

Konstantakis admitted that he has never run for any elected office position before. Before retiring Konstantakis said that he was in the newspaper business as a journalist and copy editor for about 30 years in Albany, Virginia and in the southern tier of New York. He is a native of Rensselaer and lived in the city for 33 years; he then left for 19 years before returning.

Even though Konstantakis knows that he has no real experience being a politician, he said that he gained enough experience about government and politics from his career as a journalist.

If youre in the newspaper business, you get to learn about education, politics, sports, the arts or whatever your job entails in the newspaper business and I worked in all departments, so I have an idea how government works, explained Konstantakis.

GOP Committee co-chair, Ernie Dambrose, said in a news release that the committee believes Konstantakis is the right person to lead the city into the future for many different reasons.

Jim is the perfect candidate for us. His honesty and integrity are surpassed by no one. He wont tell you what you want to hear, said Dambrose in the news release. Because of his professional experience, hell give you the facts from all angles and expects the same respect in return. Hes sincerely a candidate for the people, not the party.

Konstantakis said he is also concerned about steep increases in water and sewer rates in the city that have negatively affected residents and rate-payers. He said those increases reduce investment in the city.

I realize that our taxes havent gone up recently, in fact it just went up for the first time in a few years this past year, but our trash fees have gone up and our water fees have gone up, said Konstantakis. Yeah, our taxes are good right now, but all our fees are going up and people still end up paying more out of pocket

Konstantakis admitted that Dwyer has been doing an all right job during his tenure as mayor of the city, but he still feels like more could be done to better benefit the city.

Mayor Dwyer has done a fine job of running the City of Rensselaer for several terms now, but its time for a more progressive and aggressive approach to move the city forward in a more expedient way, Konstantakis said. The city needs to see energy at the top. Residents of Rensselaer have always been, and remain, proud of the citys heritage. Unfortunately, the citys image has been somewhat tarnished in recent years and we need to fix that. Im kinda tired of people calling us Rentlr.

Konstantakis also served for about five years on the Board of Directors of the Boys and Girls Club and said that another goal of his if elected would be to utilize his experience in athletics to boost youth programs in the city and create more family oriented programs.

In addition to playing baseball in a competitive mens league locally as well as national tournaments in Arizona and Florida, Konstantakis has been a member of the International Association of Approved Basketball Officials since 2002.

In 2015-16, he was also the assistant boys basketball coach for Rensselaer High Schools modified program and this year was the head coach of the JV baseball team at LaSalle Institute in Troy.

We need many more opportunities and community leadership for our youth, he said. Our future, our community and our country depend on it. I do not know what I would have done without our kind and generous neighbors, the Rensselaer Boys Club (now the Boys and Girls Club) and Little League to kick start my life.

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Republican candidates emerge in Rensselaer mayoral race - Troy Record

By Theodore R. Johnson By Theodore R. Johnson August 4 at 6:00 AM

Theodore R. Johnson is a fellow at New America and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy.

Two years before Donald Trump became president, he tweeted, Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you wont see another black president for generations! But six months into Trumps tenure, theres a growing buzz among Democrats that the next black president has already been identified: first-term Sen. Kamala Harris of California. Shes running for president, one fundraiser told the Hill. Take it to the bank. The dominant trend in Democratic Party politics is fresh, new and interesting, another fundraiser told Politico. And Kamala is the trifecta on that.

Im bullish on the idea that well have another black president. But its not a given that the next one will be a Democrat.

That might seem like a wild assertion, particularly given the role that racial resentment played in Trumps electoral victory. Its no secret that the GOP continues to fail spectacularly at messaging to black voters. The partys present approach to African Americans is best summed up by Trumps mockingly unserious entreaty last year to vote Republican: What the hell do you have to lose?

Black voters have lent long-standing and overwhelming support to the Democratic Party. And most of the nations rising black political stars are Democrats: Harris, Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) and former governor Deval Patrick (Mass.) who is, reportedly, the preferred candidate of several prominent Obama administration alumni, including Valerie Jarrett .

The conventional wisdom assumes that a black presidential candidate can succeed only in the more racially progressive of the two major parties the Democrats and with the widespread support of black voters. But this isnt necessarily so.

An examination of gubernatorial and senatorial elections since the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 shows that there have been comparable numbers of popularly elected black Republicans (eight) and popularly elected black Democrats (10). Though the two black governors were Democrats, the majority of the 10 black lieutenant governors have been Republicans, including the two currently holding office: Jenean Hampton of Kentucky and Boyd Rutherford of Maryland. In the Senate, there have been two black Republicans to four Democrats. At the statewide level, where gerrymandered districts arent a factor, a black Republican in a top office is no more anomalous than a black Democrat.

More significant to the prospects for a black GOP presidential nominee is the specific convergence of trends playing out across the country, particularly the intensifying hyper-partisanship. As the nation has sorted itself along party lines and antipathy has risen between the two sides , white Republicans who might harbor racial animus are willing to shelve that impulse to ensure that Democrats lose elections. At a minimum, the level of ideological polarization in American politics masks racially prejudiced voting behavior, and at a maximum, it renders it inoperable, according to a recent study on white conservatives in the GOPs base from professors M.V. Hood of the University of Georgia and Seth McKee of Texas Tech. The pull of partisanship is so strong and has become so central to the identity of white Republicans that their views on race take a back seat when they enter the voting booth .

Hood and McKee also found that white conservatives are either more supportive of minority Republicans or just as likely to vote for a minority as they are a white Republican, and that the base of the GOP does not discriminate against minority nominees in high-profile contemporary general elections. This finding helps explain the relative surge in black Republicans in Congress since the tea party movement, including Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Reps. Mia Love (Utah), Will Hurd (Tex.) and Allen West (Fla.) not to mention Indian American former governors Nikki Haley (S.C.) and Bobby Jindal (La.).

This phenomenon also can provide an advantage to black candidates in primaries and the general election. In Republican primaries, voters are overwhelmingly white and are becoming more conservative; they tend to choose the more conservative candidate. Understanding this, minority candidates often run to the right flank. Its unsurprising, then, that Heritage Action for America, an advocacy organization associated with the conservative Heritage Foundation, scored Scott, Love and West as more conservative than the average House Republican. (Hurd, who represents a purple district that is majority Latino, necessarily tacks more to the center.)

Two related studies show that in South Carolina, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are more popular than their white Republican colleague Lindsey Graham, and that conservatives, evangelicals, and less-educated individuals respond more positively to Scott when he is described as a Tea Party favorite than as the first African American Senator from South Carolina since Reconstruction.

Consider Ben Carsons 2016 presidential campaign. Carson, an inexperienced politician, rode a strong evangelical message and critiques of the media both of which play well with conservative audiences to the top of the GOP presidential polls. He held steady there for a few weeks until terrorist attacks and national security concerns (not his strong suit) changed the tenor of the race in Trumps favor. In other words, its not that racial animus doesnt exist, its that the power of conservative identity can outweigh it.

The path to the presidency for GOP candidates requires winning a majority of white voters in the general election, not just the primaries. But every Republican presidential nominee since the Voting Rights Act has handily won white voters, except in 1968, 1992 and 1996 , when margins of victory were smaller because of somewhat competitive third-party candidates. In the current hyper-partisan atmosphere, if a black candidate can appeal to Republican voters, he or she can capture the same coalition that white Republicans use to win elections.

(Sarah Parnass,Osman Malik/The Washington Post)

The Democratic Party, for its part, is well aware of its poor performance among white voters and has begun focusing its attention on them, specifically the white working class. Post-election analysis shows that it was these voters, shifting from the Democratic Party to Trump, who were ultimately responsible for Hillary Clintons undoing. Some progressives have expressed concern that the partys attempts to win back white working-class voters will come at the expense of black voters, despite the fact that black voters are the most reliable part of the Democratic base. With its obsessive focus on wooing voters who supported Donald Trump, writes Brown Is the New White author Steve Phillips, the party is neglecting the cornerstone of its coalition.

The Democrats intramural debate was evident in the recent race for the Democratic National Committee chairmanship, when an ally of eventual winner Tom Perez said of Rep. Keith Ellison who, as the first black congressman from Minnesota and the first Muslim elected to Congress, holds more progressive positions than many others in the party Is he really the guy we need right now when we are trying to get all of those disaffected white working-class people to rally around our message of economic equality? This quote illustrates a desire to address oft-cited white economic anxiety by subordinating issues of race and religion. Now Democrats must determine whether their next electoral victory lies in recapturing the white working-class voters who used to be part of their base or doubling down on the demographics-is-destiny strategy, which prioritizes appeals to the growing segment of minority voters.

So while a black liberal is fighting upstream in a political climate of racial and ideological polarization, that same climate could work in favor of the black conservative candidate. And though black Democratic candidates often increase black voter turnout see 2008 and 2012 the rash of restrictive state voting laws has suppressed turnout among minority voters. Because a black Republican nominee doesnt rely on black voters, the electoral factors that hurt black Democratic candidates dont have nearly the same effect. In an irony befitting todays bizarre political landscape, a black Republican nominee may benefit electorally from discriminatory voting laws.

This leads to yet another trend that could help: growing black dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party. Even the election of a black Democrat to the presidency wasnt enough to compel the federal government to meet demands to address systemic racial disparities in a meaningful way. For all its loyalty to the party, the black electorate has not realized the policy gains that should accompany its voting power. Yet, black voters continue to support the Democratic Party for lack of viable options in the voting booth. This conundrum is called electoral capture, a concept that Princeton professor Paul Frymer describes as a blocs overwhelming support for one political party as a result of the opposing party having no interest in, or making no effort to win, the blocs votes. As a result, some black Americans have turned to other forms of political expression black turnout was down seven percentage points from 2012 to 2016 such as rallies and demonstrations, the Black Lives Matter movement, protest votes, and principled exits from the electoral process. Black Americans dissatisfaction hurt Democrats, not Republicans, on Election Day.

This is where black men put their finger on the scale. A black Republican nominee would peel away a small but significant portion of the black electorate, mostly men. Though black men largely hold liberal views, more of them than black women buy into the conservative mantra of self-determination, small government and economic sufficiency as a remedy to racial discrimination. Also, my research, supported by similar findings, found that black men are much more likely than black women to vote for a black presidential nominee regardless of party or policy views. This suggests that a black Republican candidate can cut into the Democratic base to some extent in the absence of a black Democratic candidate. If Trump managed to get 13percent of black men to vote for him (Mitt Romney drew 11 percent in 2012 against Obama), a black Republican candidate is certain to exceed that by some noticeable margin. And in a razor-thin election, black men voting along racial lines could help tip the outcome.

Taken together, the current landscape provides fertile soil for the idea of a black Republican in the White House. Of course, when it comes to the presidency and electoral politics, good conditions are hardly enough to win. There are simply too many other factors at play, from candidates likability to things they cant control, such as the state of the economy.

And race still matters: White Republican primary contenders could try to employ coded racial appeals to denigrate competitive black candidates (or to denigrate white candidates recall the George W. Bush teams attacks on Sen. John McCain during the 2000 South Carolina primary). Further, being black and very conservative is insufficient (recall the Alan Keyes, Herman Cain and Carson campaigns). And theres the reality that the Republican bench for viable black candidates is basically empty, except, perhaps, for Sen. Scott.

Still, if the notion of a black Republican presidency occurring before the next Democratic one seems doubtful, its becoming less so as our politics becomes more divided and stress fractures emerge in historic coalitions. Given the unpredictability and hyper-partisanship of the current political environment, the political winds now blowing could indeed fill the sails of a black Republican presidential nominee.

Twitter: @DrTedJ

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Why the next black president could be a Republican - Washington Post