A handful of Chicagoans will go to the polls on March 18 and do something remarkable: they will ask for a Republican ballot.
Macklin hopes to help change this inclination. Since 2012 he’s been the GOP committeeman of the 6th Ward, an office he won by amassing 62 votes, crushing his main opponent, Jackie Robinson, who got 29. “My true affinity has always been with the Republicans,” Macklin says. “I’ve been thinking like one all my life. I came home in the last 15 years.”
“Since then, the Democrats here have gotten the credit for everything,” he says. He argues that the party’s leaders have taken the black vote for granted, and that Chicago’s African-Americans have suffered as a result. “It’s like, ‘Well, we got your vote anyway.’”
He voted for John McCain and Mitt Romney over Barack Obama. The election of an African-American as president “was good symbolically,” he says. But he thinks it hasn’t helped most black people or poor people. “Barack talks about the 1 percent. What is he? I tell people, ‘Who do you think he’d rather play golf with, Romney or you?’”
“I’m thinking 5 percent this time, and I’m hoping for 8 percent,” Macklin says.
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