Young, black, female… president?

By David M. Bresnahan

TAMPA, Florida — Over 4,000 African-American ministers and their wives are planning to make an historic announcement this morning as they unite in support of the first African-American woman to be a Republican candidate for president of the United States.

Angel Joy Chavis Rocker, 35, is a married mother and former school guidance counselor from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. She told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview that lack of political experience is considered an advantage.

“Our experiences are quite different from white Americans, or mainstream. If we were waiting to always have leaders who already had experience in a particular area, we would still be in the same situation we were in hundreds of years ago,” explained Mrs. Rocker.

“When Martin Luther King, Jr. started the civil rights movement he didn’t have any experience as a civil rights leader or as a great humanitarian. When Rosa Parks decided she was just too tired to get up out of that seat on the bus, she didn’t have any experience as a strategist or a person who knew about boycotts. She just knew she was tired of being mistreated.

“It is time for African-Americans and other minorities to truly get involved in the political system. We must have a national candidate, and a Republican Party that can attract them and can articulate their issues in a positive rather than a negative manner,” she explained.

The announcement will be made at the Tampa Convention Center at 10 a.m. today.

Mrs. Rocker believes she has enough support from the African-American religious communities around the country to have a dramatic impact on minorities and how they vote in the next presidential election.

She plans to conduct a large voter registration drive, recruiting African-Americans and other minorities to the Republican Party. She said there is no reason the Democrats should have a “monopoly of influence” over minorities.

“I have worked with many African-American ministers and lay people over the past two years and people are consistently saying that it is time for a major voter registration drive,” she explained. “We have got to reach those people who have apathy and who have lost hope in the political process.

“I am a Republican and I feel that in order for our two-party system to be effective, that we must have diversity and a numerous amount of people in both parties. In the political system your political officials represent their political constituency. We have got to have national candidates in the Republican Party that can attract African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and all other minorities.”

Mrs. Rocker plans to appeal to minorities by placing affordable health care and education reform, including school choice, at the top of her list of campaign issues. She says those are the greatest concerns of minority voters and all Americans.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re African-American, Latino, Haitian, or white American. They want their children to have the very best of education, because education is the greatest equalizer. That is what opens up the doors of opportunity. If the United States is going to remain a super power, we must truly start to educate all of our children, not just pockets of our children,” Mrs. Rocker described.

Most minorities have no choices when it comes to health care in their communities. She says doctors in many parts of the country are being forced out of business and into HMOs. Health care expense is rising, and health care choices are declining.

Mrs. Rocker also plans to address inequities in the justice system. “We have two justice systems in America. One for minorities and one for others,” she explained.

She said the very fact that she is not an experienced politician gives her a great advantage.

“I’m not one of those seasoned politicians who say things just to calm the American people down,” she said. She said the American people are tired of experienced politicians.

“We have the faith that we can turn things around like we did with the civil rights movement,” she said. “When you have ministers all over the country, interested in knowing that it is essential that their children are educated, you have churches now that are getting involved with starting their own schools. They’re educating their own congregations. That is how you change a system. You start at the grass roots levels. You have leadership in churches and communities that are articulating the same message, and that’s how you change it.”

Angel Joy Chavis Rocker may not be a name the American people are familiar with as she begins her campaign, but it appears that with the help of over 4,000 ministers from all over the country that name may soon become rather well-known.

The Republican National Committee has worked at bringing minorities into their ranks with limited success in the past few years. They even created the “New Majority Council” to reach out to minorities.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush is seen as the current front-runner among a growing field of Republicans unafraid of his standing. Other Republican potential candidates include former Red Cross Director Elizabeth Dole, Arizona Sen. John McCain, magazine guru Steve Forbes, former Tenn. Gov. Lamar Alexander, television commentator Patrick Buchanan, former Family Research Council president Gary Bauer, and talk-show host Alan Keyes.

David M. Bresnahan

David M. Bresnahan is an investigative journalist for WorldNetDaily.com Read more of David M. Bresnahan's articles here.