School Vouchers Could Bring Blacks to GOP

There's some reason to suspect so: Recent polls show that 86 percent of Black senior citizens are Democrats, compared to just 48 percent of Blacks between the ages of 26 and 35. So far the weakening of attachment to the Democrats among African Americans has not resulted in any corresponding strengthening of the GOP's appeal.

But Republicans seeking African American votes face a triple liability. The Democratic Partys strong appeal to Black, voters rests on three solid pillars. African Americans are far more dependent on government because

1. they are Black (and in need of civil rights protection)

2. they are more likely to be poor (and dependent on various welfare programs)

   and

3. they are far more likely to draw their paychecks from the taxpayer till. Three out of five African Americans with college degrees are government employees, compared to just one out of five white Americans.

For the party of less government, the obstacles to budding Black support are thus many.

But is there an opportunity for a stealth attack on the Democrats' once secure base? Yes, if you ask Republican Bret Schundler. In the premier issue of a new magazine,Crisis in Education, Schundler describes his 1993 mayoral campaign. He went door to door in Jersey City public housing projects, telling parents that Jersey City spent $9,000 per child each year for public schools and asking them if the city handed them a voucher for $9,000 instead, would they be able to guarantee a great education for each of their children?

"Not one parent said, 'I don't understand,"' reports Schundler. Instead they said, "Thank God." That was the first time in the city's history that a Republican captured the majority of votes in any public housing project he says. In fact in a city that is just 6 percent Republican, Bret Schundler got 69 percent of the vote.

David Bositis, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, concurs that vouchers may be the key. "None of this (gap between older and younger Blacks) was really an issue until vouchers," Bositis told Investor's Business Daily. "The young are far more supportive of more spending on education and I more open to vouchers."

All across the country, programs like Ohio's scholarship and tutoring I program, which allows low-income parents to use government vouchers at private and parochial schools, are dividing Black parents from Democratic leadership. Parochial schools are likely to appeal increasingly to inner-city Blacks as dynamic Black pastors begin to build small Christian schools within their congregations. But vouchers that permit parents to opt for religious schools also prompt court challenges by groups that perceive a dangerous threat to separation of church and state.

Why? I don't know. The theory that state aid to religious schools is unconstitutional makes a certain amount of sense when the aid is direct- Dollars are not unlimited, and the government shouldn't be in the business of deciding which religious schools to fund. But with vouchers, parents, not government, make that decision. Under these circumstances, the real threat to proper separation of church and state consists of having government tell parents they can have voucher money only if they avoid religious education.

I don't know who will emerge from Republican ranks to face Al Gore in the year 2000. But I do know that man or woman should be out there right now, following in Mayor Schundler's footsteps, knocking on doors to offer poor and Black urban parents their kids' ticket outta there.

New Yorker Maggie Gallagher offers blunt and animated viewpoints from a conservative angle. Write to her at Universal Press Syndicate, 4900 Main Street, Kansas City, Mo. 64112.

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