While Democratic Presidential Candidate Barrack Obama is known as the candidate of hope, he is also becoming the target of hate for some white supremacist groups – if not as a victim of actual violence, then as a rallying cry for their cause.

Concern for Obama’s safety could translate into a reason for some voters not to support him. In January 2008, Clemson University professor Bruce Ransom cited fear of assassination as one of several reasons African Americans were not 100 percent in favor of Obama. “There’s a fear there that he will be assassinated,” he said. “They want to protect him. … and at the same time, they don’t want their vote to be wasted.”

In a more recent Gallup poll, two-thirds of African American voters believe that Obama faces greater security risks than other candidates. And in a Michigan poll, 57 percent of those polled said they felt “there are people who want to hurt Barack Obama because of his race.”

Obama addressed the issue in an interview on This Week (ABC news). “You know, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it or considering the details of this, but just to broaden the issue, are there people who would be troubled with an African American president? Yes," he said. "Are there folks who might not vote for me because I'm African-American? No doubt."

But Obama believes that if he doesn't win, it will not be because of the color of his skin. "It's going to be because I didn't project a vision of leadership that gave people confidence. It's going to be because of something I didn't do as opposed to because I'm African American," he said.

Since May 2007, however, Obama has been under secret service protection, according to reports. At least five men across the country have been arrested for threatening or plotting to assassinate the presidential candidate. Three were arrested during the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Shawn Adolph, 33; Tharin Gartrell, 28, and Nathan Johnson, 32 were all described as well-armed white supremacists, although officials dismissed any threat as the “racist rantings of drug addicts.” U.S. Attorney Troy Eid called the men's plans, "more aspirational, perhaps, than operational.”

In Miami, police arrested in August Raymond Hunter Geisel, who was reported to have told a classmate in his bail bondsmen class, “If he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.”

In North Carolina, on Aug. 1, Jerry M. Blanchard, 48, was charged with knowingly and willfully threatening to kill, kidnap and inflict bodily harm upon a major candidate for president. He was arrested after witnesses told federal authorities they overheard him threatening to assassinate Obama in July.

These few individuals are not the only ones giving voice to threats; some organized white supremacists groups have spoken out as well. Ray Larson, an International Imperial Wizard with the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, during an interview with Fox News Chicago predicted Obama’s death if elected. “I’m not going to have to worry about it because somebody else down South is going to take him out,” he said. “He’ll be shot sure as hell.”

Even overseas, many openly express concern about Obama’s chances of becoming a target. In February, Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, told a Swedish newspaper that an Obama presidency would be short-lived. "He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of president. They would kill him," she said.

She was not specific in who “they” were.

But an African American president is also a change some white supremacists say they look forward to – as a means to recruit members to their cause. “Obama will be a clear signal for millions of our people,” said David Duke, former Louisiana congressman and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. “Obama is like that new big dark spot on your arm that finally sends you to the doctor for some real medicine. … Obama is the pain that lets our body know that something is dreadfully wrong. Obama will let the American people know that there is a real cancer eating away at the heart of our country and Republican aspirin will not only not cure it, but only mask the pain and make you think you don’t need radical surgery… My bet is that whether Obama wins or loses in November, millions of European Americans will inevitably react with new awareness of their heritage and the need for them to defend and advance it.”

On Stormfront, the web site forum for the White Nationalist Community, threads discussing Obama say his presidency is what the country needs to bring more people to see the white supremacist views on life. “I think Obama will win,” posted ONeil14, of Binghamton, NY. “And all of these (white) antis who talk about how much they will laugh in our faces when he does, won't be laughing for long. … Maybe Obama is right; maybe we do need his kind of change. Maybe it will wake these idiots up.”

Liz Carey is an award-winning journalist in Anderson, SC. One of her first assignments was covering a Ku Klux Klan rally in Oxford, Ohio, where Klansmen were literally turned away from the town out of fear for their safety. (Instead, white skinheads and left-wing militants attacked a police horse and came to a near riot in the street.) More recently, she covered Christian Exodus, a Christian-based neo-conservative group that hoped to move its followers into South Carolina with the goal of eventually seceding from the United States). Today, she covers the South Carolina Upstate, doing investigations and in-depth coverage for a local daily newspaper.