The People’s Voice African-American Weekly News in tiny Roanoke, Alaska, has not endorsed a candidate in the February 5 Democratic presidential primary — much to the frustration of the publisher, Charlotte A Clark-Frieson, a Barack Obama supporter.

“I’m trying to get ready to endorse him, but my board is so split,” Clark-Frieson said. While letters to the paper are almost unanimously in favour of Obama, she said, the older of the state’s two black political organisations, the Alabama Democratic Conference, endorsed Hillary Clinton in October.

So great is the tension over the contest, Clark-Frieson said, that many of the newspaper’s board members have refused to betray their preferences even in private.

Across the South, a fierce competition is afoot for black voters, who are expected to constitute from 20 per cent to 50 per cent of voters in the South Carolina Democratic primary on January 26 and in the four Southern states with primaries on Super Tuesday — Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and Arkansas. In many counties, registration has spiked since Obama won the Iowa caucuses, and election officials say that interest is at its highest point in several election cycles.

While the official ground game is just beginning, chatter about the two candidates — both of whom have substantial claims to African-American support — is constant on black radio shows, e-mail lists and at barbershops. Officials and ministers are coming forward with last-minute endorsements, and campaigns are buttering up the activity directors at senior centres.

... contd.