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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Nov. 14, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
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With few exceptions, politicans range from right to far-right

By Shelley Ettinger

In local races as well as the national returns, the capitalist class's right-wing grip on the electoral process held firm.

The key political operatives for the bosses' ongoing assault on the working class retained their seats. And the racist attack on affirmative action, couched in deceptive civil-rights language, was pushed through in California.

The United States also continues to have one of the lowest proportions of women in the national legislature of any industrialized country. Representatives of people of color also remain fare fewer than their percent of the population.

However, there were also signs of resistance to the reactionary onslaught.

The first Black woman was elected to Congress in a state that is a historic Klan stronghold. The first Asian-American governor outside Hawaii, a candidate who stood up to attacks by the Christian Coalition, won.

And although they gerrymandered her district, racist forces failed to oust a progressive African American woman from Congress.

At least one right-wing-backed ballot initiative was defeated. Two progressive measures passed in California.

Southern racist symbols

Three symbols of racist reaction won re-election in the South. They enjoyed the solid backing of the ruling class, and their Democratic opponents didn't mobilize a pro-worker movement against these thugs.

In North Carolina, notoriously racist, anti-gay Sen. Jesse Helms beat Harvey Gantt. An African American former mayor of Charlotte, Gantt had also challenged Helms in 1990. South Carolina's Strom Thurmond beat a Democratic real-estate developer to return to the Senate. If he lives until May, his will be the longest term in history.

What has Thurmond done in his long career? Some of the ruling class's dirtiest work, including leading the opposition to every civil-rights measure of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

It's no surprise that House Speaker Newt Gingrich was returned from his prosperous, all-white suburban Georgia district. He is roundly hated in most of the rest of the country for leading the attack on workers, welfare recipients, immigrants, and gays.

The good news

In the other noteworthy Georgia race, the right wing failed in its attempt to get rid of Rep. Cynthia McKinney, an African American who has been among the more progressive voices in Congress.

In a brazen move against the Black community's right to political representation, the Supreme Court had approved a re-drawing of McKinney's and several other districts. Then the Republicans ran a determinedly divisive, race-baiting campaign against McKinney, trying to hurt her campaign by concocting charges of anti-Semitism.

McKinney's re-election is a victory against racism.

So is that of Julia Carson of Indiana. Carson becomes the first African American woman elected to Congress from Indiana. It's an historic first, in a state whose rural areas were long strongholds of the Ku Klux Klan. Carson will represent a working-class section of Indianapolis.

In Washington state, the election of Asian-American Gary Locke for governor was a vindication of the struggle for women's reproductive rights and lesbian/gay/bi/trans rights. Locke stood firm against a Christian-Coalition-led campaign to bait him on these issues.

The ultra-right religious-fundamentalist group also went down to defeat in Colorado, where its so-called parents' rights ballot measure died.

Sen. Paul Wellstone was re-elected in Minnesota. He was the only Senator to oppose the welfare bill from the left, and had been under particularly heavy attack by the right wing.

Although the central issue in California was the attack on affirmative action, the progressive side won out in at least two ballot questions. Voters passed a measure to raise the minimum wage to $5.75 for employees at state contractors. A proposal to permit medical use of marijuana, for example to ease the suffering of people with AIDS and cancer, also passed.

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