Black GOP Groups Woo Mfume, Blast Democrats to Back Steele [View All]

[im10ashus]

Black Republican groups emerged from the political margins yesterday, launching a campaign to persuade African American voters to support Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's bid for the U.S. Senate.

Their efforts surfaced in a letter urging former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, who finished second in the Democratic primary, to cross party lines and back Steele against Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin, the 10-term congressman from Baltimore.

The push was evident in a Baltimore radio advertisement targeting African American listeners that was sponsored by the Washington-based National Black Republican Association. The ad identifies Martin Luther King Jr. as a Republican and pins the founding of the Ku Klux Klan on Democrats.

One woman says: "Democrats passed those black codes and Jim Crow laws. Democrats started the Ku Klux Klan."

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