Ron Walters Quotes (17 Quotes)

I think he said a lot of the right things. Republicans are putting money behind this outreach and he ran down a number of things that the administration should be doing that would be attractive to African-Americans.

It's going to come down to who is registered to vote absentee. Right now, the majority constituency in New Orleans is white.

The cost of running that operation in Massachusetts is horrendous in comparison to running a business here. We are in a rural area here (in Pennsylvania) and most people who work here live close.

still has an opportunity to reach out to blacks during the reconstruction, giving the displaced people a role in the project. But there is a problem. Already, he has made some mistakes. No-bid contracts are going to firms with close ties to Bush, and those don't tend to be minority-owned businesses.

Some of this stuff is really very serious. It's not like before when the Republicans sort of said that the party was reaching out to the black vote when they really weren't.

The question in my mind is whether the civil rights community acted fast enough, ... Here we are at the deadline, and how many black people know what we know about his record It doesnt put us in a mobilization mode. And this is a war.

Katrina has blown that outreach away. This has become a powerful emotional issue - a national issue - that will severely limit Bush's future outreach efforts, because the victims in Louisiana and Mississippi have huge family networks scattered all over the country.

Somebody has to fill in the blanks as to why the response was different, ... We have a traditional response - that a black life is not as valued as a white life.

None of those people who have made that policy are moving off the scene.

where the population was predominantly white, where FEMA got cracking in a hurry.

Some people are leaping off the ship, especially with respect to Iraq. It's a pattern going on in a number of places where the president has been moving around trying to explain his policy in Iraq.

Many blacks have deep emotional questions ... A lot of these people are their kin. The social network of the black community is spread throughout the South.

Honestly, he's not replaceable. He's just a brilliant, wonderful person. I'm certainly interested, but we have a long way to go before getting into those conversations. He's still here and we're proud to have him.

There is so much anger out there, I think it is going to be very difficult for Republicans to break through to African Americans.

Black people are mad because they feel the reason for the slow response is because those people are black and they didn't support George Bush. And I don't expect that feeling to go away anytime soon.

It muddies the water a lot right now. It could go any number of ways.

My assessment of his role on the council is that he has been effective. He has gotten himself into the thick of the baseball politics with his own backing and plan, and has carved out some attention to development projects in Southeast as a part of the construction.