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100 Most Influential African-American Republicans
Wednesday, February 18, 2015 10:44 AM
By: Theodore Kettle
Black History Month brings to mind Rosa Parks refusing to walk to the back of the bus; Freedom Rider John Lewis being beaten to the ground by bigoted mobs, then rising to spend more than a quarter century in Congress; and Clarence Thomas refusing to let Democrats subject him to a "high-tech lynching" to keep him off the U.S. Supreme Court.
We may have a black president serving his second term, but in recent months, African-American Republicans have been making the biggest history, and may be making even more in the days ahead.
In January, Mia Love — a charismatic, Brooklyn-born, Haitian-American, Mormon, small-city mayor and mother of three — was sworn in as the first GOP black congresswoman ever. South Carolina, the cradle of the Confederacy, gave the once-despised Party of Lincoln a victory by electing Tim Scott, the South’s first black senator since 1881.
And while presidential campaigning may not be brain surgery, we are weeks away from a likely announcement of a White House run by Dr. Ben Carson, who went from the streets of Detroit to extracting tumors from the skulls of toddlers at one of the world’s top hospitals.
Those on Newsmax's 2015 100 Most Influential African-American Republicans list have bucked the trend and aligned themselves with the party that once fought slavery, and now fights enslavement to state dependency (or is supposed to), range from the famous and powerful to behind-the-scenes rainmakers, local chieftains, and energetic rising stars.
Within the list’s top tier is, of course, Justice Clarence Thomas, who proved again just this month the potency of his devotion to the Constitution as written. He blasted his liberal colleagues on the high court for refusing to grant a stay to Alabama’s attorney general on a federal injunction against multiple state laws recognizing marriage solely as the union of one man and one woman.
It was "yet another example of this Court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the states," Thomas warned, and "a signal of the Court’s intended resolution" on same-sex marriage later this year: the declaration that it is a constitutional right.
The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley has been proving the power of the pen since the release of his best-seller last summer, "Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder For Blacks To Succeed." The suffering of millions of blacks for decades, both economically and at the hands of criminals within their own community, is paved with the good intentions of big government, Riley compellingly argues.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain came from near-anonymity in 2012 and briefly led the polls for the Republican presidential nomination with his message of flat tax rates and individual initiative. He may not be running for anything again anytime soon, but he is more impassioned and articulate than ever in his critiques of the political status quo of both parties.
Scholar and columnist Tom Sowell of the Hoover Institution has built up a library of dozens of volumes, pivoting from race relations to immigration to economics to the destruction waged against society by leftist intellectuals. That his more than a half century of polemical scholarship has been ignored by the Pulitzer and Nobel judges illustrates what is at stake when a great black mind refuses to remain on the ideological plantation.
Further down the list are familiar names from the entertainment and sports world that will surprise you, plus introductions to local officials, activists, and future leaders determined to change society for the better for Americans of every complexion.
The days of comedian Eddie Murphy joking on "Saturday Night Live" in the early 1980s about African-American Republicans being an exotic species whom few have glimpsed are long gone.
Listed below are Newsmax’s 100 Most Influential African-American Republicans. A caveat: not everyone on the list may be actually registered Republican. But these are individuals who have a public identity as Republican or ones who lean Republican.
1. Ben Carson — renowned pediatric neurosurgeon; likely 2016 presidential candidate
2. Colin Powell — former secretary of state; U.S. Army general
3. Condoleezza Rice — former secretary of state
4. Clarence Thomas — Supreme Court justice
5. Mia Love — U.S. congresswoman, Utah
6. Tim Scott — U.S. senator, South Carolina
7. Jason Riley — Wall Street Journal editorial writer; author, “Please Stop Helping Us”
8. Michael Powell — former chairman, Federal Communications Commission; president, National Cable & Telecommunications Association
9. Will Hurd — Texas congressman
10. Herman Cain — businessman; 2012 presidential candidate
11. Thomas Sowell — economist; author
12. Allen West — former congressman, Florida; ex-Army officer
13. Janice Rogers Brown — D.C. Circuit judge
14. Shaquille O'Neal — retired NBA star; actor
15. Michael Steele — former chairman, Republican National Committee
16. Antonio Williams — director of government relations, Comcast
17. Deroy Murdock — nationally syndicated columnist; businessman
18. Lynn Swann — NFL Hall of Famer; 2006 Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee
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19. Elbert Guillory — Louisiana state senator; former Democrat
20. Dwayne Johnson — athlete; actor
21. James "Bo Snerdley" Golden — producer, "The Rush Limbaugh Show"
22. James Earl Jones — Oscar-winning actor
23. Artur Davis — Montgomery, Alabama, mayoral candidate; former Democrat
24. Walter Williams — economist; guest host, "The Rush Limbaugh Show"
25. Judge Lynn Toler — star of "Divorce Court"
26. LL Cool J — rapper; actor
27. Herschel Walker — retired NFL running back and Heisman Trophy winner
28. Joseph C. Phillips — "The Cosby Show" co-star; Christian commentator
29. Shelby Steele — author, "The Content of Our Character"; documentary filmmaker
30. Joseph Louis Clark — former high school principal portrayed by Morgan Freeman in "Lean On Me"
31. Prince — pop star
32. Alveda C. King — pro-life activist; former Georgia legislator; ex-Democrat; niece of Martin Luther King Jr.
33. Boyd Rutherford — Maryland lieutenant governor
34. Nolan Carroll — Philadelphia Eagles cornerback
35. Richard Ivory — founder, HipHopRepublican.com blog
36. Larry Elder — talk radio host; columnist
37. Jimmie "J.J." Walker — stand-up comedian; iconic comic actor on "Good Times" in 1970s
38. Peter Kirsanow — member, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights
39. Robert P. Young Jr. — chief justice, Michigan Supreme Court
40. Don King — boxing promoter
41. Star Parker — president, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (CURE); columnist; congressional candidate
42. Alan Keyes — former presidential candidate
43. Raphael "Raffi" Williams — deputy press secretary, RNC
44. Ward Connerly — former University of California regent; affirmative action foe
45. Crystal Wright — conservativeblackchick.com blogger
46. Armstrong Williams — radio commentator; author; media entrepreneur
47. Kevin A. Ross — host, "America’s Court with Judge Ross"; former Los Angeles Superior Court judge
48. Stephen N. Lackey — corporate philanthropist; GOP fundraiser
49. Michael L. Williams — Texas commissioner of education
50. B.J. Penn — assistant secretary of the Navy under George W. Bush
51. Conrad James — scientist; member, University of New Mexico Board of Regents; former state legislator
52. Robert J. Brown — CEO, B&C Associates
53. Harold Doley — Doley Securities
54. Logan Delany — Delany Capital; treasurer, Ben Carson Organization
55. Alvin Williams — Black America’s Political Action Committee
56. Robert A. George — New York Post editorial writer
57. Amy Russell — clerk for U.S. District Judge James M. Moody Jr. in Arkansas
58. Jane E. Powdrell-Culbert — New Mexico legislator
59. Karl Malone — retired NBA great
60. Niger Innis — national spokesman, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Nevada congressional candidate
61. Neal E. Boyd — pop opera singer; "America’s Got Talent" winner; candidate, Missouri legislature
62. Kay James — president, Gloucester Institute; former George W. Bush administration official
63. Erika Harold — Miss America 2003; 2014 congressional candidate in Illinois
64. Damon Dunn — former NFL wide receiver; real estate investor; Long Beach, California, mayoral candidate
65. Thomas Stith — chief of staff for North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, leading governor’s "Innovation to Jobs" initiative
66. Robert Woodson — president, National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise
67. Sheryl Underwood — comedian; CBS "The Talk" commentator
68. David Tyree — retired NFL wide receiver; New York Giants director of player development; pro-family activist
69. Bruce Harris — nominated by Gov. Christie and defeated by state Democrats to be New Jersey’s first openly homosexual supreme court justice; former mayor of Chatham, N.J.
70. Orlando Watson — black media communications director, Republican National Committee
71. Scott Turner — Texas state legislator; retired NFL defensive back
72. Dale Wainwright — attorney, Bracewell & Giuliani; former associate justice, Texas Supreme Court
73. Stacey Dash — actress; Fox News commentator
74. Jackie Winters — Oregon state senator
75. Patricia Funderburk Ware — HIV/AIDS expert who served in Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations
76. Chidike Okeem — Nigerian-born, London-raised blogger
77. J.A. Parker — president, Lincoln Institute; publisher, The Lincoln Review
78. Nadra Enzi — "The Hood Conservative," New Orleans-based anti-crime activist
79. Mike Hill — Florida state legislator
80. Sonja Schmidt — PJTV commentator
81. Chelsi P. Henry — entrepreneur; political strategist
82. Joseph Perkins — columnist, Orange County Register
83. Carson Ross — mayor, Blue Springs Missouri
84. William Barclay Allen — former chairman, U.S. Civil Rights Commission; candidate for U.S. Senate in California
85. Clarence M. Mitchell IV — "C4," Baltimore talk radio personality
86. Deneen Borelli — author, "Blacklash"; FreedomWorks outreach director
87. John Meredith — lobbyist; son of civil rights pioneer James Meredith
88. Bill Hardiman — Michigan state veterans services administrator; former mayor, Kentwood, Michigan; former state senator and congressional candidate
89. Jill Upson — West Virginia legislator
90. Ken Blackwell — former Cincinnati mayor, Ohio secretary of state, and GOP gubernatorial nominee
91. Vernon Robinson — campaign director for Draft Ben Carson movement; former North Carolina congressional candidate
92. Amy Holmes — news anchor, TheBlaze TV
93. Dr. Elaina George — otolaryngologist; ObamaCare critic
94. Tony Childress — sheriff, Livingston County, Illinois
95. Larry Dean Thompson — George W. Bush deputy attorney general
96. Kevin Jackson — host, "Black Sphere" radio show
97. Michel Faulkner — retired New York Jets defensive lineman; New York City pastor; 2010 congressional nominee against Rep. Charles Rangel
98. Ryan Frazier — investment consultant; Colorado congressional candidate; Mitt Romney adviser
99. Brian C. Roseboro — international banker; George W. Bush Treasury Department official
100. David Webb — talk radio host; political columnist
