During the local government reorganization committee’s series of public hearings, the Reverend Adrian Brooks expressed concern about what effect government merger will have on minority representation on the new common council. I share Rev. Brooks’s concern.
Currently, there is one African-American lady on the city council, and one African-American lady on the county council. For the city, that is one in nine representation which fairly closely matches our 11% African American population. On the county side, when you add the 3 county commissioners to the 7 county council members, the single African-American representative again approximates the percentage of African-American population in our community.
To my knowledge, there are no Hispanic representatives on either the county or city councils, or on the board of county commissioners. Yet there is a growing Hispanic population in Evansville, which we also should address in terms of representation on our legislative boards.
Under the current merger plan, with 12 districts and 3 at-large representatives proposed, a common council of 15 members likely will have only one African-American representative under status quo politics. What I’m saying is that if African-Americans only run for office in the single district with a strong African-American voter base, there will be only one African-American representative likely on the 15-member common council. And while I cannot read his mind, maybe that is what concerns Rev. Brooks. It concerns me too because that would water down the political influence of an important cultural segment of our community.
If the merger plan passes the referendum with its current proposal for 12 districts and 3 at-large council members, both political parties each must recruit African-American candidates for more than one of the 12 districts, and at least one of the at-large seats. The Republican should select their African-American recruits from districts with a strong Republican voter base, such as those in Center and Scott townships. The Democrats must do the same by recruiting their African-American council candidates from within their voter strongholds.
If the local political parties fail to prepare for consolidation well in advance by launching searches for potential African-American candidates who reside in 12 council districts proposed by the reorganization plan, then both parties are failing a significant and historic cultural constituency of our community.
Bill Jeffers
