Race Card Played Against Liberal Jewish Democrat Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen is a liberal Democrat representing a district where a majority are minorities. An African-American woman named Nikki Tinker is challenging the liberal Tennessee Representative in the Democratic primary. She is running a dirty vicous campaign against a member of her own party and trying to tar him as some sort of racist. She aired an ad linking Cohen to images of the Ku Klux Klan. Tinker focuses on a vote by Cohen in 2005 when he was a member of an advisory board on downtown development. Cohen voted against renaming a downtown park and removing a large statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest on horseback. Forrest, a former slave trader, helped create the original KKK. The ad for challenger Nikki Tinker juxtaposes pictures of Cohen, a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and a hooded Klansman while asking, "Who is the real Steve Cohen?"

Allow me answer the question posed by that ad. Steve Cohen did not depart from Mayor Willie Herenton, the city's first black mayor, who rejected the park idea saying a public fight over the parks would hurt the city's image. Steve Cohen endorsed Obama before Super Tuesday. Steve Cohen introduced the House resolution that recently passed formally apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow. Steve Cohen tried to join the Congressional Black Caucus last year because of his strong agreement with it's stances and his representing a black area but was rejected on account of his not being black.

A new Tinker ad has emerged that is controversial. It says that "While he's in OUR churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet ... he's the only senator who thought our kids shouldn't be allowed to pray in school," referring to an old vote against school prayer from when Cohen was a state senator. Remember that Tinker is running against a Jew and at the same time running ads about him tapping his feet in "OUR" churches. The implication is that Cohen is the outsider that does not belong in a black Church. Perhaps this would not be so bad if it did not come on the heels of an ad with images of the KKK.


Tweet