As Black voters hesitate on Harris, Democrats race to win them over

Atlanta: In Atlanta, a group of Black entertainers and elected officials took the stage at a brewery to urge a crowd of Black men to support Vice President Kamala Harris. In Milwaukee, dozens of volunteers fanned out across Black neighborhoods to encourage sometimes skeptical residents to vote. And in a blitz of national media interviews and campaign ads, Harris herself made her case to Black voters.

The flood of recent door-knocking, ads, rallies and celebrity-studded outreach events across battleground states reflects Democrats’ growing alarm about their weakening support among Black voters — a yearslong drift that the party’s leaders have not confronted so directly, and with the stakes so high, until now.

A New York Times/Siena College poll last week found that Harris was underperforming President Joe Biden’s support with Black voters in 2020 by roughly 10 percentage points, and by 15 points among Black men — a drop-off that could doom her fortunes. The poll found that former President Donald Trump was making inroads, with 15% of Black voters saying they would back him.

Interviews with more than three dozen Black voters, strategists and elected officials offered a complicated picture of a politically powerful group of Americans whose waning devotion to the Democratic Party stems partly from a feeling that their decades of loyalty has delivered little in return. The party now finds itself in the unfamiliar position of needing to treat Black Americans as voters who must be persuaded to support them, rather than unflinching supporters who will back liberal candidates without a second thought.

Young Black men in particular say they feel disillusioned by the political system and do not see how Harris’ policies could help them. Their apathy and frustration with Democrats have provided an opening for Trump.

Harris has just a few weeks left to convince hesitant Black voters that she is the candidate who can bring the change many say they are waiting for, and to give some of them a reason to vote at all.

“People were so tired of the negative, we went to the space for joy, excitement and happiness — and that has its place,” said LaTosha Brown, a co-founder of the voting rights group Black Voters Matter. “At this phase, it’s take your gloves off.”

Blunting Trump’s Appeal

Trump has improved his standing with Black voters despite a long history of racist remarks and the sporadic, sometimes ham-handed and occasionally offensive nature of his outreach.

His successful overtures to them are often rooted in the argument that he will improve their economic conditions — a reality that was front of mind for the speakers at the Atlanta brewery Friday. The town hall event included local Democratic officials as well as producers Jermaine Dupri and Isaac Hayes III.

Onstage, Dontaye Carter, the chair of the North Fulton Democratic Party, unfolded a printed page of Harris’ policies. Listing her proposals to reintroduce and expand the child tax credit and offer down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers, he argued that Harris would deliver for Black Americans.

“She ain’t got ‘Black’ listed on there, but if you take the time to read through those policies — that’s us. That’s our community,” he said, later asking: “What is Trump bringing us?”

Much of Black voters’ openness to supporting Trump, the men argued, stemmed from a concerted disinformation effort. Some younger Black voters, for example, mistakenly believe that Trump has promised more of the stimulus checks that he signed during the coronavirus pandemic. Another false claim contends that as California’s attorney general, Harris went out of her way to prosecute Black men and allowed the state’s immigrants to take their jobs.

Allies of Harris see a dire need to counter this messaging.

“I think sometimes folks have short memories, but we have to remember who it is that we’re dealing with,” said Cavalier Johnson, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee. Trump, he said, would enact policies that “make life harder for Black people, generally, in this country.”

On Monday, Harris’ campaign released a policy agenda targeted heavily at Black men. The plan includes forgiving a portion of small-business loans; supporting mentorship and apprenticeship programs; and a program that would help stem health inequities for Black men.

In part, the measures offered something of a rebuttal to criticisms that the Democratic Party has neglected Black men.

“While Vice President Harris is promising to equip Black men with the tools needed to pursue our dreams and aspirations,” said Cedric Richmond, a Harris campaign co-chair, “Donald Trump is promising Black America a national nightmare.”

Addressing the Economy

One of Harris’ most stubborn challenges is dissatisfaction with the economic record of her governing partner, Biden.

Myesha Lawrence, 26, an entrepreneur in Stone Mountain, Georgia, does not follow politics closely. But she is supporting Trump.

“I had more money in my pocket when he was president,” she said. Since then, inflation has eaten into her income. “It was costing a lot to put gas in my tank.”

Many Black men, in particular, struggled with job losses during the pandemic and with the rising cost of living since then. Republicans have pointed to higher prices to criticize Harris, who they say could have helped push through economic policies to aid Black workers.

Still, some Black men remain on the fence, or are leaning toward Harris.

In Philadelphia, the heavily Black Democratic stronghold of a top battleground state, Robert Simuel, 34, said he was still making up his mind after voting for Barack Obama twice and for Trump in 2016 and 2020.

This time, Simuel, a supervisor for a food service company, said he was frustrated with Trump’s lack of policy specifics, especially as his rent rises and he struggles to save up to buy a home.

As part of what she calls an economic “opportunity agenda,” Harris has proposed to cap rent increases and provide up to $25,000 for first-time homebuyers.

Though Simuel is skeptical about Harris’ plans for the economy, he said, she may have his vote because of abortion rights.

“She’s trying to put those rights back into women’s hands,” he said.

Watching his grandson play football Saturday in Lincoln Park in Milwaukee, Kenneth Bennett, 62, explained his reluctance to support Harris. He said he had spent years trying to put his life back together after a decades-old felony drug conviction, but still found it difficult to find safe housing.

He said he was not sure if she would take matters like immigration and the economy seriously enough.

“I just don’t like it when she’s grinning about the border and all that,” he said. Still, he would rather vote for her than Trump.

“He’s a felon and he’s going to be a felon,” said Bennett, whose right to vote was restored years after he completed his sentence. “I’m a felon and I can’t even get an apartment.”

As he spoke, a volunteer and a Harris campaign organizer approached several people around him, asking about their political leanings and logging the answers into an app called Reach.

The Biden campaign piloted Reach in Milwaukee County as it tried to reach voters through their social networks. Users can share content about Harris’ campaign with friends and family members, an effort that campaign officials hope will combat misinformation and gin up excitement.

“We do that because we want to touch voters at all points,” Johnson said. “And we’ve been able to touch, in our county, over 30,000 people using that relational organizing strategy.”

Reaching Apathetic Voters

Democrats’ most formidable surrogate, Obama, has begun making the case for Harris in key states. Last week, he admonished skeptical Black men, saying they were “coming up with all these reasons and excuses” to oppose her, many of them driven by sexism.

But for people like Al McBride, 47, of Pittsburgh, the entreaties are too little, too late.

He recalled casting just one vote in his life — for Obama in 2008. He said he did not plan to vote again.

Sixteen years after Obama took office, McBride said, “We still in the same place.”

Harris’ campaign has aimed to convey empathy in its messaging to Black men who feel left out of the political process, and in recent days she has spoken more directly to Black voters.

On Monday, she appeared in interviews with independent Black journalist Roland Martin and with The Shade Room, a digital entertainment publication. On Tuesday, she will sit for an interview in Detroit with Charlamagne Tha God, a popular Black radio host. Her campaign has also begun initiatives geared toward Black faith voters and attendees of historically Black colleges and universities, and is running ads during college football and NFL games to reach men broadly.

Some Democratic Black men, including those who spoke at the town hall in Atlanta, have expressed a fear that if Harris loses, Black men will be accused of having blocked the ascent of the nation’s first Black female president.

“I think it’s fair — overly fair — to say that Black women have shown up for Black men a lot,” Ryan Wilson, the CEO of the Gathering Spot, a chain of social clubs, said during the event. “We have the opportunity as Black men to show up for a Black woman.”

Dev Coggs-Jones, 35, who works as a 911 dispatcher in Milwaukee, expressed frustration with both candidates. She cited skepticism of Harris’ past as a prosecutor, among other things. But she saw Trump as a liar who infused “blunt racism” into his language, and said she planned to vote for Harris.

What weighed on her heaviest, though, was what she saw as Biden’s lack of follow-through on his promises. For example, the president has helped ease student loan debt for millions of Americans, including many young Black voters — but she is not one of them.

“Things are not happening like they said they were,” she said.