AY SHORE, N.Y. - Republicans are funneling money to three African-American candidates for the House of Representatives, pushing to have them speak at the coming GOP convention, and are considering hiring a staff member to head minority outreach at the House campaign committee.
In contrast to previous elections, when Republicans virtually wrote off African-American voters, House Republicans are making an assiduous effort to reach out to blacks and other minorities. House leaders have promoted both symbolic and substantive legislation targeting black communities this session.
Republicans acknowledge these efforts are unlikely to yield many short-term benefits, though they could influence the outcome of a few close races. More important, however, they represent a broader effort by the GOP to reposition itself as more moderate after years of a more conservative tilt.
Among the three Republican African-Americans seeking a House seat is Islip Supervisor Joan Johnson, whom Suffolk County Republicans picked to succeed Representative Rick Lazio. He is running for the US Senate against first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Johnson said she thought House leaders would be furious at Suffolk County Republicans.
''`This is a seat you want to hold, and you've nominated a 66-year-old black woman?''' Johnson said she assumed they would ask. ''`Are you crazy?'''
But national Republicans have quickly coalesced around Johnson and predict she will keep Democrats from winning the seat Lazio gave up. Though her nomination was strictly a local decision, Represenative Tom Davis of Virginia, who chairs the House GOP's campaign arm, said Johnson's moderate outlook and local popularity will win her crossover voters. ''She's a power in her own right,'' Davis said.
While Johnson was not the party's first choice - after another Islip town supervisor decided not to run - she stands a reasonable chance of becoming the first African-American Republican woman elected to Congress. She is one of the most visible examples of the aggressive campaign by GOP leaders to win black support this year.
David Bositis, senior political analyst for a black think tank, said he still expects the usual 90 percent of African-American voters to support Democrats. But he speculated that the Republicans' outreach may be targeting white voters as well as blacks.
''I do think it reflects a changing dynamic as it relates to race and politics in the United States,'' said Bositis, who works for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. ''From 1966 to the relatively recent past, it was a problem with white voters if you were seen to be too sympathetic to African-Americans' concerns. ... Using race negatively is now seen as negative, including with a lot of white voters.''
But with a change in the House leadership and GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush projecting an image of inclusiveness on the campaign trail, Republicans see this election as their best opportunity so far to make inroads into a staunchly Democratic constituency. Bush addressed the NAACP's convention last week, for example, whereas the GOP's 1996 presidential nominee, Bob Dole, declined to appear before the group.
Johnson, a former social worker who moved to Harlem in the 1950s hoping to make it as a singer, may not fit the typical mold of a GOP candidate, but the party is firmly behind her.
Outspoken and effusive, Johnson describes herself as a fiscal conservative who supports gun control and abortion rights. She said she is still developing her platform on national issues but showed no hesitancy about breaking with her party in refusing to issue a blanket condemnation of what opponents call ''partial birth'' abortions.
''If a doctor decides that is what is necessary for the woman's life, we have no damn business being involved with that at all,'' Johnson said.
Johnson is not the only African-American candidate Republicans are touting this year: Retired naval officer Jennifer Carroll is challenging Representative Corrine Brown, Democrat of Florida, while former Bush official Dylan Glenn is taking on Representative Sanford Bishop, Democrat of Georgia.
