"Civil rights veterans in the nation's capital were shocked and offended Friday as news came that Democratic presidential hopefuls Joe Lieberman, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, Wesley Clark and John Edwards had secretly orchestrated a simultaneous withdrawal from the DC presidential primary scheduled for January 13, 2004.

The primary is set to make history as the first time a majority-black jurisdiction leads off the presidential nominating process. District civil rights and voting rights leaders made their primary first-in-the-nation in order to draw attention to the fact that DC residents cannot elect voting members to the U.S. House or Senate.

The five candidates submitted nearly identical letters on the same day to the District's Board of Elections and Ethics, asking to be removed from the January 13th ballot. The DC primary will now be a contest between Democratic front-runner Howard Dean, civil rights leader Al Sharpton, Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Carol Mosely-Braun. For DC activists, the betrayal brought back bitter memories.

Lawrence Guyot and Marshall Brown were members of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party that fought all-white elections in the south. Since blacks could not vote in that state's presidential primary or serve as delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the group faced violence to hold integrated elections and sent its own delegation to Atlantic City.

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Chair Lawrence Guyot spent the convention in jail as the Democrats were torn over the issue.

'In 1964 we anticipated some Democrats fighting to deny blacks the right to vote. But I can't believe that forty years later five white candidates would coordinate a scheme to boycott the nation's only majority black-primary,' Guyot stated. 'Were they so afraid of losing this primary to Howard Dean that they had to insult us like this?'

Evidently Joe Lieberman's plan is to withdraw from every primary in the country so that he can claim to be the only undefeated candidate, said Brown, noting the Connecticut Senator has now withdrawn from the January 13th DC primary, the January 19th Iowa Caucuses, and is widely regarded as having written off the January 27th New Hampshire primary.

Also singled out was Senator John Edwards. In 1998, hundreds of African-Americans from Washington, DC took buses to North Carolina to help Edwards defeat anti-DC Republican incumbent Lauch Faircloth. 'Apparently black voters in DC were good enough for him to use as campaign muscle in 1998. But in this race he has not wanted our votes or our input,' added Guyot.

The Washington Post reported that Edwards vowed at a July reception with local DC elected officials that he would campaign hard for the District's primary, then refused to hold a single campaign event. Added former SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) worker Sharlene Kranz, 'DC residents are disenfranchised to begin with - how dare these candidates conspire to deny us a full ballot?'

Guyot noted the unspoken factor behind the candidates' withdrawal, 'the candidates don't mention that Howard Dean is leading in the polls, raising the most money and garnering our key union endorsements. This Jan. 13 primary will show two things--Governor Dean will triumph and DC will highlight its struggle for voting rights." (African American Reflector, November 14, 2003)