It's About Time

It's about time.

By: Mark Kilmer · Section: Election 2006

Some charges are offensive.

For starters this morning, in the Opinion Section of the Philadelphia Daily News online, a letter by Jack Horan of Towamencin Township (Montgomery County, southwester PA) tells us that the GOP is "pulling a fast one" with Lynn Swann's candidacy. Swann, he argues, is a token, a "cardboard cutout," an empty black suit being paraded around by the Party of Whitey to put a black face on the operation.

Giving the party's nomination to a cardboard cutout with no experience and virtually no ideas on how to improve state government might allow the party to feel good about themselves, but it will not produce a victory nor absolution for their decades of neglect for black Americans. All races are not fooled that Mr. Swann is nothing more than a rich country club conservative.

I'm not sure what he means by his charge – "decades of neglect," by state government or by the GOP? – but I do know that the letter was printed also on the online site of the Centre Daily Times. And that the letter's writer, perhaps an African American himself, repeats former Bill Scranton campaign manager Jim Seif's accusation without the overt racial charge: Swann is a "rich country club conservative," suggesting an old wealth into which Lynn Swann was not born.

I am offended. My support for Lynn Swann has nothing to do with his race, although I think this aspect of Mr. Swann can be a positive thing politically and more important, is special to me personally. I would love to be a part of an electorate which proves that a qualified black man can be elected governor. I'm sick of the old manmade limits born of naught but pure prejudice.

Lynn Swann ought to be governor. It's about time.