Competing for votes

A News & Observer writer extolled the increasingly diversified N.C. Republican Party in his column Wednesday, using a local GOP luminary as an example.

“The surprise election of Hasan Harnett as the state Republican Party chairman earlier this month at the state convention means he will join Ada Fisher, a Salisbury physician, as a member of the RNC. Both Harnett and Fisher are black,” writes Rob Christensen.

“The third member of the RNC is state Rep. David Lewis of Harnett County, who is white.

“This is likely the first time that any state GOP has had a black majority representing it at the national level – at least since Reconstruction.”

Fisher, whose guest columns appear in the Post, has long said the GOP should be attractive to African Americans. “Republicans seldom talk about their history, which is the history of black liberation politics,” she says in her book, “Common Sense Conservative Prescriptions.”

Christensen concludes that more competition for the black vote could be good for all — the GOP, the black community and the Democratic Party. No doubt that’s true. Fisher would say it’s about time; finally, more people are embracing what she has said for years.