Trump Prepares a Push to Woo Black Voters

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The Trump 2020 campaign has been quietly reaching out to prominent African Americans about joining its latest coalition, intended to boost Republican support in the black community. The effort comes just as the president capped off a month filled with racially divisive language and Twitter taunts aimed at House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings and four freshman congresswomen of color.

Critics may find the timing of the outreach outrageous. But the campaign hopes that if it can shave just a few percentage points off Democrats’ overwhelming support among black voters, it can boost voter turnout in eight or so key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — each of which Trump won in 2016 by less than 1 percentage point.

The campaign’s pitch to African Americans is simple: Ignore the president’s words and instead focus on his policies, the state of the economy, the low unemployment rate, the passage of criminal justice reform and the creation of Opportunity Zones, which are meant to bolster investment in underserved or poorer cities.

When Trump took office in January 2017, the unemployment rate among African Americans was 7.7 percent. Friday’s jobs report pegged it at 6 percent for July.

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But for others, Trump’s rhetoric cannot be divorced from his record, and critics argue he must take responsibility for that as president. A Quinnipiac University poll released on July 30 showed that 80 percent of African American voters surveyed consider Trump a racist.

“The idea is that, because of his agenda, his comments on Charlottesville, Baltimore or ‘shithole countries’ do not matter,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the first African American to serve in that role. “Or that you can say the most racist things in the world, but hey, I got a tax cut. Or you can disparage my homeland, but the unemployment rate is going down.

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The Trump campaign was criticized during the 2016 campaign for vying for the black vote but never taking the time to visit black churches, black colleges or African American groups. The purpose of coalitions like the African American one is to do a better job of outreach to specific communities.

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The African Americans for Trump coalition is being organized by Katrina Pierson, senior adviser to the Trump campaign, and a few campaign staffers. The launch date is set for after Labor Day. The Trump campaign has already rolled out two coalitions this summer — Latinos for Trump and Women for Trump — meant to show the president’s support among groups other than white men.

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And longtime African American Trump supporters agree with the campaign’s assessment that voters should worry about results over rhetoric.

“I think people get caught up in the emotional with President Trump,” said Georgia businessman and longtime Trump supporter Bruce LeVell, who led Trump’s National Diversity Coalition in 2016. That group of campaign surrogates primarily made TV and public appearances on behalf of Trump, whereas the 2020 campaign coalition is expected to do more political outreach.

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African Americans continue to suffer from a large disparity in wages relative to white people, including between those with college educations. The same disparities exist in wealth and homeownership, making far more black people vulnerable to economic downturns because they have fewer assets to fall back on.

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“Let’s just look at the way he treated his one and only African American assistant to the president. The president called me a dog. How will he explain that to African American female voters?” said Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former senior official at the Trump White House.

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The Trump campaign’s 2016 goal was to exceed Romney’s support among African American voters. For 2020, its goal is to boost Trump’s support with black voters up as much as possible — especially in battleground states.

Bush in 2004 managed to do this in Ohio, where he earned 16 percent of the African American vote by appealing to conservative evangelicals and Pentecostal voters who had not previously been engaged in politics. These voters came off the sidelines, in part, because of a state amendment outlining marriage as a union between only a man and a woman. Blackwell, a former Ohio politician and longtime conservative leader, said he was part of that effort to appeal to black voters in 2004.

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In 2016, then-candidate Trump predicted that if he won a first term and then ran for reelection, he would earn 95 percent the African American vote in 2020.

Even then, he talked about what he called the poor state of inner cities. He promised African Americans better jobs, better schools and greater prosperity.

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