Opportunity for minority voters

Tuesday’s contests were the biggest chances yet for minority voters to flex their power.

HOUSTON — Martha Whiting-Goddard believes there’s power in voting — she’s seen it firsthand.

Her great-grandfather, the Rev. John Henry “Jack” Yates, was one of a handful of freed slaves who founded Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in 1866, Houston’s oldest African American Baptist church. The church has historically helped shape the city’s political discourse, ushering powerful African American political leaders through its doors such as Booker T. Washington and women’s suffrage movement organizers.

Parishioners here banded together again Tuesday to shape the course of American history. They voted on which Democrat should take on President Donald Trump in the fall in what many black voters say is the most important election of their lifetimes.

The Super Tuesday contest in Texas and a swath of other states with substantial black populations are the biggest opportunity yet for minority voters from coast to coast to weigh in on the Democratic primary.

And for people like Whiting-Goddard, it’s a reminder of their power.

“For black people, we have someone in power that’s kind of put us back in time and so we need to look to the future,” Whiting-Goddard, 70, said. “Voting was the one right that we recognized long ago that we had that was important.”

Black voters have already helped transform the Democratic race. Nearly two thirds of nonwhite voters in South Carolina backed Joe Biden on Saturday, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of more than 1,400 voters in the state’s Democratic primary.

Black voters revived what had been a lagging campaign into one that has quickly emerged as the leading moderate alternative to progressive Bernie Sanders. But activists cautioned against assuming that black voters in Texas or elsewhere will follow South Carolina’s lead.

Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, said he believes African American voters nationally are split into three groups: Those who are concerned about electability, voters who want progressive policies and individuals who are agnostic and prepared to vote regardless of who advances to November.

“It’s going to be interesting to see some of the other states that have a different culture than South Carolina that might separate out black voters in some of these Super Tuesday states,” Albright said.

Houston resident Linda Nwoke said she’s most familiar with Biden, who spent eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president. But she has yet to decide who to throw her support behind among the crowded field.

“We’re trying to see who can we trust with our vote and not let it be wasted again,” Nwoke, a 72-year-old retired history teacher, said. Five presidential hopefuls remain after Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer dropped out of the race before Super Tuesday.

Black Lives Matter Houston founder Ashton Woods, a 35-year-old millennial who is running for the Texas House District 146 seat, said the organization decided in February to officially endorse Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“Her and Bernie have been the two people who have talked about issues that affect black people but affect everyone else with a special recognition that we are marginalized and that it hits us a little harder without pandering,” Woods said.

Michael Adams, Texas Southern University’s political science department chair, said he believes older black women will show up as expected to the polls, but he believes younger voters could shake up the election.

“In both Texas and in California right now, there’s a progressive element and African Americans of course have been a very loyal constituency and part of the Democratic Party base, both nationally and here in Texas,” Adams said.

The 2020 election will be the first one that University of Houston junior Kenneth Davis III will cast his vote in.

Davis, 20, said he planned to vote for Sanders.

“The laws that are being passed affect real people and we have to have a seat at the table, especially millennials, Gen Z and the generation behind us,” Davis said.