A WASHINGTON NOTE: Black Republicans conflicted on Obama

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

If anyone could lay claim totheir state’s Republican Party, it’s Deborah Burstion-Donbraye of Cleveland. The 53-year-old international business consultant is the former outreach director for the Ohio Republican Party, for starters. She helped deliver the swing state to President Bush in his 2004 re-election bid in which he garnered 16 percent of the black vote.

Among her Republican credentials, Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye worked in several high-level positions during the Reagan and Bush administrations of the late 1980s and was the press secretary for George W. Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaign in 1994. In the 1980s, she was an assistant national desk editor and her now-deceased husband, Larry Wade, an editorial writer for The Washington Times.

During the 2008 primary season, Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye cast her conservative lot with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. She staunchly opposes abortion.

“But there’s been an ‘Obama’ sign on my lawn since Super Tuesday,” she readily admits about her unusual support for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama.

“I went from a Huckababe to an Obamamama,” she says.

Or you could call her an “Obamacan.”

“What’s an Obamacan? A Republican who can’t afford health care insurance,” she quips.

Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye can be counted among the growing number of high-profile black Republicans, including Gen. Colin L.Powell, commentator Armstrong Williams and former congressman J.C. Watts, who say they might not vote for the Republican candidate this fall.

These black Republicans are struggling with the historic significance of the Obama candidacy. Their conflict is just one example of the ways in which race will affect the outcome of the general election between Mr. Obama and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

“It’s a big dilemma,” Mrs. Burstion-Donbraye says. “I’ve been a Republican all my life, but I don’t see what bone with what meat [the Republicans] are giving blacks to bite into.”

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, a black Republican whose name is mentioned among potential McCain running mates, expresses incredulity about the historical notion.

“The novelty of history wears off pretty quickly,” Mr. Steele says. “What happens when [black Republicans] wake up the next day after the election and realize that you voted for a man to be president that you are totally philosophically opposed to?”

“As an African-American, I am very proud of the accomplishments Barack Obama’s been able to achieve,” he says.

However, Mr. Steele remembers what Mr. Obama said about him during his 2006 campaign for U.S. senator.

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