Dems race for black vote

Steve Hildebrand is the political pro who gave Barack Obama the Iowa caucuses, who turned him into a potential Hillary beater by winning the first round in the fight to be the 2008 Democrat candidate for the White House.

The victory made the prospect of a first black president real, offering American voters a vision of salvation from generations of racial shame. Which is quite something from a man with a goatee beard we have never heard of. So who is he?

Hildebrand is officially number two on the letterhead, Obama's deputy campaign manager. He is one of a triumvirate running a campaign with roots deep in the Democrat party machine. The other two, manager David Plouffe and political consultant David Axelrod, are partners in the Chicago 'message and media' company AKP&D.

Axelrod (above, whispering to a reporter) is the overall strategist. But it is Hildebrand who is poised to inherit the mantle of the political whizzes who actually win elections: men like Lee Atwater who helped George Bush the elder with his legendary 'negative' of Willy Horton the rapist paroled only to murder; James Carville for Bill Clinton with the 'focus group' constantly speaking in his head; and, most recently, Karl Rove, the 'wedge issue' plotter who gave America the 'Dubya' George Bush disaster.

Hildebrand has his own formula. "You can do it," he says, "below the radar."

He earned his spurs winning Iowa for Al Gore in 2000, and joined Obama as the 'Iowa expert'. This was key. "If Barack doesn't win Iowa," his wife Michelle said early on, "it is just a dream."

Hildebrand's expertise did the trick in Iowa. After the New Hampshire setback less than a week later, when Hillary Clinton staged her comeback, Hildebrand (above) flew straight to South Carolina for the primary on January 26. It is the next one that Obama must win. Half of the state's Democrats are black, and to beat Hillary nationally he has to break the Clintons' long hold on the black vote. South Carolina is the place to do it.

Which is where Hildebrand's 'below the radar' skills come in. It is no coincidence that Obama's team have been playing the race card since New Hampshire.

When Bill Clinton, campaigning for his wife in New Hampshire, described Obama as a 'kid' and that the Illinois senator's claim to have 'opposed' the Iraq war while Hillary 'supported' it was a 'fairy tale' the ex-President was clearly criticising Obama's dubious claim to a policy position. But the comments were taken by the Obama camp to be racist: how could a black 'kid' dream of winning the presidency?

Then Hillary, casting herself as the 'doer' rather than the 'dreamer', pointed out that it was President Johnson who brought in the Civil Rights Act, not Martin Luther King. That is being played as a slight against King, the most revered of all black Americans.

If the black voters of South Carolina can be persuaded that a vote for Clinton is a vote for ingrained racism, Obama (left) has a chance to turn the state. Already the influential Jim Clyburn, South Carolina's only black congressman in Washington, has said of Bill Cinton's 'fairytale' comment: "That bothered me a great deal."

This is what Hildebrand means by working below the radar. And as one of his aides in Iowa put it: "He never stops working." ·