Barack Obama. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bill Richardson. The field of minority and female candidates for president has never been so strong. But the question remains: Despite the expected presence of an African- American, a woman, and a Latino, will America in 2008 elect yet another male president of northern European descent? Such is the question from the Christian Science Monitor.
The indicators of change are encouraging. A 2005 poll by Siena Research Institute/Hearst Newspapers showed that 81 percent of respondents would vote for a female candidate. And a CBS News/New York Times poll from early last year found that nearly all Americans say they would vote for a woman for president from their own political party if she were qualified.
Had former Secretary of State Colin Powell run for president in 1996, he might have won. That’s what both Hugh Price, then president of the National Urban League, and Robert Woodson Sr., president of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, said in a PBS “African American World” program.
“The opportunities for female and minority candidates have increased,” says political scientist Thomas Carsey of Florida State University. “Barriers are breaking down at a broad level in society, and this is happening in politics as well.”
Today, female and minority candidates, he notes, are more likely to win state-level elections and succeed in the private sector – achievements that can be among the steppingstones to the presidency. They also have improved access to the nominating process, which is more open, Carsey adds.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to imagine that we might have a female president or a person of color as president,” adds Calvin Exoo, professor of government at St. Lawrence University.
Both Democratic and Republican pollsters have expressed similar sentiments.