Word: scheer
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Scheer swept all the Negro communities, although none of the established Negro leaders endorsed him. "I said Watts was a good thing, you know, and the people in the black ghettoes know that. None of them give a good goddamn how Cohelan votes on civil rights laws. They know you don't get action until you make trouble...
Announcements like these won Scheer a lot of free television coverage. Suddenly cameraman -- even from William Knowland's conservative Oakland Tribune -- were following him everywhere. "Some of my Ramparts friends told me to cool the 'Black Power' stuff if I wanted to win, but I insisted there really wasn't any white backlash in the District...
Instead, it seemed to Scheer that racists -- including Oakland's White Citizens Council -- thought their taxes were going to support Negroes on welware. When these voters were convinced that only two percent of their taxes were spent on welfare programs -- that it was the war that was putting the burden on them -- "racism disappeared." "I was frank with whites," he added. "I told them they had damn good reasons to build Negro schools and start other crash programs. I told them they were going to be the victims of Negro frustration...
...Francisco newspapers called Scheer's campaign the "Children's Crusade." He says there's some truth to that: "I had my opponent's nephew working for me." But he complains that "people shouldn't dismiss me that easily. Radicals were once considered dangerous, you know, and then for a long time, they were thought just plain ineffectual. My campaign proves that's not true. When people see the returns Tuesday -- and Brown loses -- they'll realize how important radicals...
...Scheer predicted Brown would lose because "he decided California voters were racists and maniacs and ran his campaign that way." In doing so, Brown sacrificed the support of the radicals and the middle-class liberals of the California Democratic Council. "We were his workers, you know, and he never thought he could lose us, no matter what he did. He was convinced we wouldn't vote for Reagan, and so he moved further and further right...