African American Businessman Spends 1M to Urge Blacks to Vote Pro-Life 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 13, 2006
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — With the balance of power in Congress hanging in the air, a leading African American businessman says black voters in the United States should put their historical pro-life values above political party. That means voting for pro-life candidates rather than supporting Democratic candidates across the board.
Herman Cain is best known as the former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. He is a political commentator and was a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
“More and more African Americans are pro-life," Cain said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained. “Our message to African Americans is simple — it’s time you vote for candidates who support our values."
Cain will underscore that message with a $1 million advertising campaign in key states and congressional districts targeting black radio programs and urban radio stations young African Americans enjoy. Some of the ads focus on abortion.
The campaign is a second go-round based on a highly successful Ohio campaign in 2004 that helped President Bush garner 17% of the African American vote in the Buckeye State – double his vote total from the 2000 presidential race.
The ads appeared in Dayton, Cleveland and Cincinnati Ohio, as well as in Colorado, Minnesota, Florida, Georgia and other states.
The ads are funded by Americas PAC, a Cain-backed organization, which former Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile said did a great job in turning out black pro-life votes.
Americas PAC’s African American radio strategy “hampered our ability to expand the off-year electorate in 2002," Brazile said.
The new campaign should resonate again with black voters as polls show African Americans are more pro-life than Americans as a whole.
In an August 2004 poll sponsored by Pace University and Rock the Vote, 54 percent of all Americans declared themselves pro-life while just 44 percent said they supported legal abortion. However, African-American voters took a pro-life position by a larger 59 to 42 percent margin.
As a snapshot of that support, polls in Florida found that 77 percent of black Americans backed a measure on the 2004 ballot to notify parents before a minor teenager’s abortion. Some 65 percent of Florida voters in general voted for the measure that November.
With black voters so strongly pro-life, black commentator Star Parker says that the increasing desire to support pro-life candidates this election is the beginning of a trend.
"Black pastors and their congregants are waking up to the fact that the liberal agenda that they have been supporting all these years does not liberate but denigrates, dehumanizes, and enslaves," Parker said.
Since the 1973 Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited abortions, 15 million abortions have been performed on black women. African-American women also have abortions hat much higher rates than do white women.
Related web sites:
America’s PAC – https://www.voteourvalues.com
