A liberal and conservative writer today both shot down the so-called “Bradley Effect,” the idea that some white people say they are going to vote for a black candidate, but fail to pull that level once they enter the privacy of a voting booth. It's racism pure and simple.

The BE is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley who lost the California governorship in 1982 by a whisker, though he was way up in the polls over the now forgettable George Deukmejian.

Blair Levin, who worked on Bradley’s campaign, wrote in the New York Times that Bradley lost because an “unpopular gun control initiative and an aggressive Republican absentee ballot program generated hundreds of thousands of Republican votes no pollster anticipated.” Bradley, who refused to play the “us vs. them” game, abhorred the fact that his name was linked to race-based voting, according to Levin.

Sal Russo, president of Russo March + Associates and former chief of staff to Deukmejian, blamed the “confiscatory handgun initiative on the ballot supported by Bradley liberals” for his candidate’s victory. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “public polls stopped polling too soon” and Deukmejian’s internal polling showed he was less than one percent behind Bradley on the Monday night before the election. Bradley lost, according to Russo, because he was “too liberal, not too black.”

The BE, of course, has moved to center stage as Barack Obama has built a solid polling edge over John McCain. It is encouraging that Levin and Russo say BE is largely a myth. Russo goes a step further, believing BE serves as a handy excuse for any black liberal who loses an election.

This blogger hopes Levin and Russo are right, but was recently reminded by a wise PR counselor to never underestimate the amount of latent racism in this country. Let’s pray the country is better than that. Here’s to Obama either winning or losing based on his ideas rather than the color of his skin.

(Photo: SoHo Journal)