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Mitt Romney invoked that legacy during a 2007 interview on NBC's "Meet the Press": "My dad's reputation ... and my own has always been one of reaching out to people and not discriminating based upon race or anything else." In recent months, Obama has approached race from an intensely personal perspective. After the shooting of unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin in a Florida neighborhood
-- an act many blacks saw as racially motivated -- Obama spoke directly to Martin's parents from the Rose Garden. "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," Obama said. Diminished enthusiasm for the president in the wake of the economic downturn could dampen black turnout. And that could make the difference in Southern states Obama won in 2008, particularly North Carolina and Virginia. Other factors could keep blacks away from voting booths. Romney's address to the group comes as Democrats and minority communities are expressing concern over a series of tough voter identification laws in a handful of states. Critics say the laws could make it harder for blacks and Hispanics to vote. "He'll be standing in that room asking people for their votes at the same time that Republican legislators are trying to disenfranchise minority communities," said Finney, the Democratic consultant. Romney expressed support for such laws during a late April visit to Pennsylvania, which now has one of the toughest voter identification statutes in the nation. "We ought to have voter identification so we know who's voting and we have a record of that," Romney said then.
[Associated
Press;
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