(ThyBlackMan.com) He may not yet have the name recognition of Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney, but pizza magnate Herman Cain has something others in the Republican presidential field do not _ his race, and escalating buzz.
Cain, an African-American entrepreneur with an impressive corporate resume, has come out of nowhere to become the Republican candidate to watch since the party’s first presidential debate earlier this month in South Carolina, where those in attendance declared him the hands-down winner.
A survey released Wednesday by the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling suggests Romney is leading the pack among Republicans in the key state of Iowa with 21 per cent in support. But Cain has surged from the 
bottom of the heap to tie with Palin for second place, with each of them at 15 per cent.
In a Gallup poll last week, Cain also ranked highest in the survey’s “positive intensity score” among Republican voters.
In an interview on Wednesday, the 65-year-old Cain said his popularity proves there’s no need to raise millions to run for president if there’s grassroots support.
“We don’t have to raise the most amount of money,” he said on CBS.
“We just need to raise enough money to be competitive, because there’s an element going on in this campaign that money can’t buy. The fact that my message is resonating so well, our ground game, our grassroots development is far exceeding a lot of the other candidates.”
And yet who is Herman Cain?
He remains a mysterious figure who has yet to face much criticism _ not from the media nor from a Republican establishment that has aggressively taken aim at potential candidates like Palin and Donald Trump.
He’s rumoured to be a favourite of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire libertarian brothers who have helped bankroll the Tea Party movement.
He’s a stage 4 cancer survivor, based in Atlanta but born in Tennessee to a mother who cleaned houses and a father who worked as a chauffeur.
He’s pro-life and wants to defund Planned Parenthood. He has called Social Security a “scam” and sharply criticized welfare, saying: “Programs today are designed to make people more dependent rather than less dependent.”
He also says he would not appoint a Muslim to a cabinet position if he was president.
Cain’s candidacy has renewed questions about that little-understood facet of American politics _ black conservatism, a perplexing phenomenon if only because the vast majority of African-Americans vote Democrat.
“The black conservative is almost always someone who’s supposedly achieved all of their successes all on their own _ there’s always the claim that they did it all by themselves, they didn’t need affirmative action, they didn’t need welfare, they didn’t need handouts, so why should anyone else?” Toni-Michelle Travis, a professor at George Mason University who specializes in race politics, said Wednesday.
“They hold themselves up as proof that the American dream lives. It’s all very patriotic and pro-business.”
Cain hasn’t hesitated to bring up race in his run for president.
In a new musical video that serves as a biographical introduction to his candidacy, Cain says his popularity among Tea Party adherents proves that the movement does not harbour a shameful secret about its distaste for U.S. President Barack Obama.
“To all of those people who say that the Tea Party is a racist organization, eat your words,” Cain, clad in a black cowboy hat, says in the video that also features an African-American female supporter.
“When people ask me about the Tea Party, they ask me if it’s about colour, and I say: ‘Yes it is, it’s about red, white and blue,'” she says.
Cain has also implied he possesses bona fides as an American black man that perhaps Obama does not.
“My great-great-grandparents were slaves, and now I’m running for president of the United States of America,” he says in the video. “Is this a great country or what?”
Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, points out that Cain is attempting to get two messages across with those words.
“He is extolling American triumphalism and suggesting that the nation has conquered its ugly, racist past,” she wrote in a piece on The Nation website on Wednesday.
“That’s for the Tea Party. But he is also reminding us that Barack Obama is not, after all, descended from American slaves. That’s for the black viewers.”
Travis agrees.
“The issue of whether Obama is black enough is never going away,” she said. “In the year when we’re marking the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, Cain is probably smart to make the suggestion and some people are going to pay a lot of attention to that.”
But she adds that Cain has had a relatively easy ride from the media, with few questions being asked about his business dealings or who’s backing him, and those days are likely numbered now that his popularity is swelling.
Critics will likely emerge soon to point out that Cain _ described as a true “son of the South” in the video _ owes much of his success to the civil rights battles fought a generation ago in his home state of Tennessee and other jurisdictions, Travis said.
“Whether it’s Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or black legislators, it’s just a matter of time before they come out to point out that he didn’t get where he is today on his own, he didn’t make it because he was necessarily brilliant, he had help that allowed him to move forward just like anyone else,” she said.
“The criticisms are going to come.”
Written By Lee-Anne Goodman