GOP critics in heavily contested Tampa county claim Romney campaign's failures with black voters has cost the party support
Leading Republicans in a key Florida battleground have condemned Mitt Romney's campaign for writing off African American voters and attitudes toward minorities that they say have cost the party crucial support.
Art Wood, chairman of the Republican party in Hillsborough County, a diverse area of about one million people and one of the most heavily contested regions of the state, said his party's presidential candidate failed to even try to win over black voters.
"Romney did a really poor job with minorities. That was my greatest disappointment. You'd go on to his website and he'd have a column for outreach. You clicked on that and there was Catholics for Romney, Democrats for Romney, fishermen for Romney. You never saw blacks or African Americans for Romney until four weeks ago," Wood said.
"I think it's the big frigging smart guys at the top who think they know how to run a campaign, and they probably just wrote off the African American vote. Romney did a really poor job with the African Americans. They're in many ways like Hispanics. They favour traditional marriage, they go to church regularly, they're suffering worse from unemployment."
Wood was backed by a Republican contender for the US Congress in the area, EJ Otero, who is not even including his party affiliation on his election posters and literature because he thinks it will harm his chances.
"I think it's true but not only with the Romney campaign. That's a problem with the Republican party as a whole, and not just with African Americans. Hispanics, too. The Republican party has written off African Americans and Hispanics for the past 20 years and it needs to change," he said.
Otero, a former air force colonel who served in Iraq and is of Cuban descent, said part of his party's problem is how it discusses issues that are important to minorities such as immigration and welfare.
"I do believe we've got to get off the emotional argument of: the border, the border, the border. We need to control the border so white slavery stops and narco trafficking. But when it comes to the people, we're talking about community," he said. "There's also this myth that all poor people want here is handouts. They don't. All they want is the jobs they used to have."
Otero acknowledged that he has distanced himself from his own party. "I put my ideas. Nowhere in there does it say I'm a Republican. That's not helpful," he said.
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SOURCE: The Guardian
Chris McGreal in Tampa
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