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Republican Allen West's win over incumbent U.S. Rep. Ron Klein by 7,000 votes in Broward County assured him of the win, Palm Beach County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Siegel said Tuesday night....frpa

Two black Republican victories tonight mark the first time African-Americans will represent the GOP in Congress in seven years. Retired Lt. Colonel Allen West's win in Florida's 22nd District and South Carolina State Rep. Tim Scott's victory in that state's 1st Congressional District is also the first time two black GOP members will serve in Congress since 1996. Scott defeated Democrat Ben Frasier in an open contest to replace retiring Republican Rep. Henry Brown to the first black GOP in Congress since former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts retired in 2003. West defeated incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Klein shortly after Scott's...

The Obama presidency has not led to a post-racial America, says Toby Harnden, but black Republicans in Congress could help break down barriers . Campaigning a few miles from Fort Sumter, where the first shots of the Civil War were fired in 1861, Tim Scott described last week how he was born into poverty and a broken home, much like Barack Obama. But the conclusions that Scott, 45, drew were very different from those of Obama. When he was 15, a man who ran a Chick-fil-A fast-food restaurant taught him "that there was a way to think my way out...

As CBN News has reported, a record number of African-American Republicans are running for Congress this year. One activist who's encouraging more black voters to give Republicans a chance is Ron Miller. Miller is an Air Force veteran and executive director of Regular Folks United, an organization working to advance America's founding principles. He is also the author of Sellout: Musings from Uncle Tom's Porch. The book delves into Miller's journey into identifying himself as a conservative. In some ways, it's a history lesson as to why he says Democrats may not always have the best intentions for Black Americans....

Overall, the GOP has fielded more than 30 African-American candidates for federal office, including Ryan Frazier in Colorado's Seventh Congressional District and Vernon Parker in Arizona's Third Congressional District. And as the economy loses steam, and President Obama's poll numbers sag, the ultimate humiliation in this summer of Democratic discontent is to find Republicans trumpeting 2010 as "The Year of the Black Republicans." A trend with historic rootsThis trend defies modern identity politics. In the 2008 election, 95 percent of black voters chose Obama. Yet the attraction between blacks and the Republican Party is not so strange as it seems....

On this day in 1863, Frederick Douglass (R-MD) met with President Abraham Lincoln (R-IL) for the first time. Senator Samuel Pomeroy (R-KS) escorted Douglass to the War Department building. On arrival, Douglass urged Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to allow equal pay for African-American soldiers in the U.S. Army. Though sympathetic, Stanton said that would require congressional approval, which he supported. Next, Douglass was introduced to the president at the White House. Lincoln stood and shook his hand "just as you have seen one gentleman receive another," Douglass later recounted. "I at once felt myself in the present of an...

Conservative Black Republican Congressional Candidate Thrown Out Of Cystic Fibrosis Fundraiser Because Big Donor Dems Object FR Exclusive You would think it couldn’t happen in America but it has. Retired Army Lt. Colonel Allen West is a conservative Black Republican. He was to be honored at an upcoming Cystic Fibrosis Fundraising Dinner in Florida, but the invitation was withdrawn because of pressure from liberal Dems who also support the Foundation. Allen is running, (and running well) for the Congressional seat now held by far-left Democrat Ron Klein. The district, Florida 22, covers the east coast of Florida from Fort Lauderdale...

President Reagan's remarks at a National Black Republican Council Dinner on September 15, 1982. Click here for his GREAT speech

Voters in South Carolina nominated a black Republican lawmaker for an open congressional seat Tuesday, rejecting a legendary political name and potentially changing the face of the national party. State Rep. Tim Scott defeated Paul Thurmond, an attorney who is son of the one-time segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. Scott, who won the runoff with 69 percent of the vote, is now poised to become the nation's first black GOP congressman since 2003. Scott, 44, owns an insurance business and became the first black Republican in the South Carolina Legislature in more than a century when elected two years ago....

Republican Tim Scott earned a landslide victory against challenger Paul Thurmond in the Republican runoff in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. The Associated Press called the race for Scott with the candidate leading Thurmond 74 percent to 26 percent. There was no question that Scott was the candidate of the party's D.C. establishment in South Carolina's 1st congressional district. It's a label that has essentially been the kiss of death for other GOP primary candidates this election cycle. But in the open seat primary to replace retiring Rep. Henry Brown (R) the party appeared thrilled to coalesce behind Scott, the...

MSNBC HOST: Lt. Col., our time is limited, but my last question to you. The Tea Party has raised concerns that it may have, I guess, racism build in it. We have seen some racist signs at past events. People have said that is not apart of the Tea Party movement, but are African-American candidates aligning themselves with the Tea Party? LT. COL. ALLEN WEST (RET.): Well, I don't think they're so much aligning themselves with the Tea Party. The principles and values I espouse: limited government, lower taxes, individual responsibility, accountability, liberty and honoring the traditions of our Constitutional...

Most Black Republicans Since Reconstruction Run for CongressBy Max Fisher on May 05, 2010 1:28pm African-American voters and the modern GOP have a complicated relationship. There hasn't been a black Republican in Congress since 2003. After President Obama won 95% of the black vote in the 2008 election, the Republican National Committee, partly in a bid to gain some African-American support, appointed black Republican Michael Steele as RNC head. Steele's tenure has been rocky, but public support for Obama has also dropped, as public frustration with the economy rises. So it's in this climate of complex racial politics that a...

Listen to the surprise in Luke Russert's voice as he reports that many African-American Republican candidates for congress are seeking support from the Tea Party. After all, says Luke, the Tea Party is a group that "a lot of folks have claimed to be racist against African-Americans." Russert expressed his amazement on MSNBC this morning, discussing a New York Times article that reports that as many as 32 black Republicans are running for Congress. View video here.

Among the many reverberations of President Obama’s election, here is one he probably never anticipated: at least 32 African-Americans are running for Congress this year as Republicans, the biggest surge since Reconstruction, according to party officials. The House has not had a black Republican since 2003, when J. C. Watts of Oklahoma left after eight years. But now black Republicans are running across the country — from a largely white swath of beach communities in Florida to the suburbs of Phoenix, where an African-American candidate has raised more money than all but two of his nine (white) Republican competitors in...

The Republican Party has not given African Americans a good reason to vote for the party, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele said Tuesday night. "You really don't have a reason to, to be honest -- we haven't done a very good job of really giving you one. True? True," Steele said at DePaul University, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Steele, the first African-American chairman for the RNC, said the GOP has lost its historical link to African Americans. "This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass," he said. "The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP,...

Steele: No reason for black GOP base By: Andy Barr April 21, 2010 05:43 PM EDT Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told a group of students that African-Americans “don’t have a reason” to vote for Republicans. Steele was asked Tuesday night during a speech to roughly 200 students at DePaul University why African-Americans should vote for GOP candidates. “You really don’t have a reason, to be honest,” Steele responded, as was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. “We haven’t done a very good job of giving you one.” Steele has made similar comments in the past, saying during an...

Don, Paul, Jacqueline, Pat, Mike, Henry, Acquanetta. Her name stands out, true, but Acquanetta Warren is even more of an oddity than her four-syllable handle lets on: She's a black Republican woman, and she's a serious candidate for the 63rd Assembly District. "I am black, and I am a woman, and I am a Republican," said Warren, the mayor pro tem of Fontana and deputy director of public works in Upland. "I'm going to win this." Political observers in Sacramento say Warren is a serious candidate. She's been endorsed by three Assembly members - including Paul Cook, R-Yucaipa - and...

The praise for conservative icon Ann Coulter and scorn for “Barack Hussein Obama’s” socialist agenda was plentiful at a Republican candidate forum in Washington, D.C. Thursday, and it certainly sounded like any standard GOP event. But it sure as heck didn’t look like one. That’s because the 2nd annual Frederick Douglass Foundation Leadership Summit, which kicked off on Thursday and runs through Saturday, is a gathering for black Republican congressional candidates. The schedule includes a reception at the GOP’s Capitol Hill Club and an audience with Michael Steele, who last year became the first black chairman of the Republican National...

This year's campaign for Congress looks to be the liveliest since 1994's "Contract with America" explosion. And, unless she has a last-minute change of heart and mind, Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education, is announcing this month her candidacy to represent a poor, heavily Democratic, majority-black congressional district just east and south of Los Angeles. Parker, born in 1956, is a Republican who hasn't held political office before, but we joked last month that she had a ready reply if attacked on grounds of inexperience: You're wrong. I've stolen. I've lied. I know how to...

Robert Allen Mansfield, a sergeant in the National Guard with service in Iraq, has announced he is dropping out of the May 18 Republican primary election to run for governor as an independent. The state Republican committee voted overwhelmingly, last month, to endorse Attorney General Tom Corbett for the spot. Still in the primary race is state Rep. Sam Rohrer (R-128) Mansfield is an African-American from Philadelphia, born in 1971, whose heroine addicted mother put him up for adoption. He spent two years in foster care before being adopted by the Mansfield family.