POLITICS THE GOP GOES FISHING FOR BLACKS

Yvonne Thompkins is quick to point out that slavery was abolished by a Republican president and that blacks earned more money under Richard Nixon than under any other modern president. But Thompkins says that unless George Bush can tell Texas’s black Republicans what their party has done for them lately, they may-in the words of Governor Bill Clements-“go fishing” come November 8.

That’s not a comforting analysis for the GOP. since Thompkins was sent to Dallas by the National Conservative Political Action Committee, which works closely with the GOP, to stalk the estimated 5,000 registered black Republicans in the county. She’d like their help in signing up the county’s 2,500 other unregistered black pachyderms. But she’s got some bad tidings for the Bush camp: local black Republicans, she says, “aren’t hiding out or embarrassed to be Republicans. They just have a lot of problems with the [Republican] party right now.” And those problems translate into problems for the Republicans, who can’t count on the kind of cakewalks Ronald Reagan enjoyed without the black vote.

Thompkins is counting on help from the Black Republican Council of Dallas County, a heretofore dormant eleven-year-old group of black partisans that includes South Dallas businessmen Hudson Griffin and Comer Cottrell, the council’s president. Thompkins has been trying to revive the spirit of vol-unteerism and networking in the council’s few active members.

“While many black Republicans feel the Democrats will raise taxes and waste their money on hastily thought-out plans,” Thompkins says, “they also blame their party for not responding to hard-core issues like housing, crime, drugs, and other social service problems.”