A lapse looks costly (Raleigh NC Columnist pulls the race card!Unbelievable!)

I'll tell you one thing. If the sight of Donnie Harrison traipsing through the woods with bloodhounds wasn't enough to get Wake County's black voters to the polls, nothing will ever be enough.

Harrison, in his TV ads and in an interview with me, noted that he favors bloodhounds to search for lost Alzheimer's patients, children and criminal suspects, but his use of them nonetheless sent chills down my spine because of their historical symbolism.

Judging by voter turnout, Harrison's use of dogs that were at one time used specifically to track down black slaves resonated with hardly anyone else.

Thus, it appears that Harrison has edged out John Baker for the office of Wake County sheriff. Overall voter turnout in the county was 55 percent, but in the predominantly black precincts where Baker was strongest, the figure didn't reach 40 percent.

For instance, Baker got 98 percent of the votes cast at sites in Chavis Heights and Walnut Terrace, but turnout there was a disgraceful 25 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

Show me a bloodhound -- except for ol' Duke on "The Beverly Hillbillies" -- and I think of slavery. It's hard to read anything about that "peculiar institution" and not see references to the hellhounds.

Since reading Richard Wright's short story "Big Boy Leaves Home" when I was 12 years old, I'd rather rassle an agitated alligator than pet a sleeping hound.

Frederick Douglass, speaking to an anti-slavery audience in Scotland in 1846, stated, "There is no spot ... where the slave is secure. He is still exposed to the bloodhounds that may be let loose against him."

Yet the man who could be Wake County's new sheriff featured them prominently in his ad campaign against a qualified black incumbent. And apparently won.

Harrison said, "When you've found people like I have, black and white, you don't think of slavery. ... I like bloodhounds because they're one of the best 'trailers' you can get. That's what's bred into them."

I believe Harrison, and if he's guilty of anything, it's of being insensitive to how the ads could affect some people.

If Baker's only qualification were his color, I'd be indifferent to Harrison's victory.

Baker, though, has been an outstanding public servant and role model. The first time I met with him, he had summoned me to his office to talk about a program he wanted to implement that would allow inmates in the county jail to get their GEDs. That, he said, would lessen their likelihood of returning.

As good a sheriff as he was, though, he made one politically fatal mistake: He thought his record would speak for him.

If you haven't seen Donnie's dogs, trust me, you will: They'll be sniffing around your children's school lockers and anywhere -- or anyone -- else arousing suspicion.

To the county's black voters who lolled around and didn't vote -- for either Baker or Harrison -- I say, with all due disrespect, "You ought to be ashamed."

To Big John -- and with apologies to Willie Tee -- I just want to say, "Thank you, John."

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The votes in this race will be certified today at 1pm...Baker would have had to get 90% of the provisional ballots to win...of course, he did not get close to that!

It is a great day in Wake County...the 23 year Black Dimocrat power base has been broken with this election.

But it will be nasty because the Dims, the media, former Sheriff Baker will attack Harrison at every turn. This race baiting column by black Barry Saunders is just the opening volley. The media has given Baker a pass and we will probably be hearing about gross mismanagement now that he is gone.

If you haven't seen Donnie's dogs, trust me, you will: They'll be sniffing around anyone -- arousing suspicion.

So conservatives are racist and their little dogs too? I wonder how the author would feel if these dogs tracked down someone who had harmed a member of his family, or searched for his missing child, his alzheimers parent, or even, his body trapped in the wreckage of a building bombed by terrorists.

Maybe the low voter turnout was an indictment of a system that frequently refuses to address black-on-black crime.

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