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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Harris is making unprecedented Black outreach efforts as Biden campaign | |
looks to her to bolster support | |
By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN | |
Updated: | |
4:00 AM EDT, Mon May 6, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
The big event on Kamala Harris’ trip to New York two weeks ago was | |
left off her public schedule. | |
A few hours after appearing on set with Drew Barrymore, the vice | |
president was at a small dinner with Black finance leaders put | |
together by software and investment executive Charles Phillips to ask | |
for their ideas and help getting more Black voters connected to the | |
reelection campaign. | |
The dinner had been delayed — it was supposed to have happened� | |
weeks earlier when high winds in New York made the Air Force ground | |
Harris’ plane — but the discussion had intensified since, with� | |
reelection campaign polls and focus groups showing Joe Biden | |
continuing to leach Black support. | |
The campaign is counting on Harris to help change that — both | |
because of who she is as the first Black vice president and by | |
deploying her in ways that go beyond anything she did in 2020 in a | |
Black outreach effort unlike any previous presidential campaign. | |
“There is misinformation that is astonishing to me. But we have to | |
deal with it,” Harris told CNN when asked about her outreach to Black | |
voters in an exclusive interview during a campaign swing in Las Vegas� | |
in April. | |
But voters aren’t the only ones who need a reality check, Harris | |
argued: “Any suggestion and inference that we’ve got any voter in | |
our back pocket and therefore should be able to count on their vote | |
without earning it, I think is misinformed.” | |
Big questions loom over all these conversations for Harris and her | |
circle, who are thinking not just about her future as a running mate� | |
this year but as a woman interested in another eventual presidential | |
run herself: Can she help shift the kind of national appeal being made | |
to Black voters beyond just talking about criminal justice reform and | |
legalizing marijuana? Can she really connect with Black voters, | |
especially men, in ways that she didn’t while running for president | |
in 2019? Can she help reverse the trend of some younger Americans | |
giving up on the Democratic Party that top operatives are particularly | |
concerned about for younger Black Americans? | |
Voters in focus groups are showing “a strongly held belief about the | |
value of having a woman of color in national office, and it is a | |
positive insight about President Biden that he embraces that value as | |
well,” said Geoff Garin, who has been conducting some of the research | |
for the campaign. | |
On Monday, Harris will give what’s expected to be a hard-hitting | |
speech in Detroit on the next stop of her economic opportunity tour. | |
Then, on Wednesday, she’ll be in the Philadelphia suburbs with | |
“Abbott Elementary” star Sheryl Lee Ralph for an event on abortion | |
rights. | |
These events are in addition to frequent appearances in Black media | |
that have often gone under the radar, with many more planned as the | |
campaign ramps up. | |
“That connection, that appeal, that sense that they see themselves in | |
her is something that is really powerful,” said Julie Chavez | |
Rodriguez, a former Harris aide who is now the campaign manager for the | |
Biden-Harris reelection, expressing hope that the vice president can | |
“root their relationship with the Democratic Party in ways that we | |
can continue to grow and build that base.” | |
In the 2020 Democratic primaries, Biden always had consistent Black | |
support, while Harris never drew much. And while and other polls show | |
Biden still has higher approval ratings among people of color and is | |
the overwhelming choice against Trump, many of those same polls | |
consistently show Trump’s share of the Black vote is ticking into | |
the double digits. Many Black activists, Black Republicans and even | |
some administration aides bitterly bring up Biden’s 2020 line — | |
— as evidence that they have been taken for granted. | |
They don’t tend to remember Biden’s apology. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a� | |
Black Republican from Texas, has even made a running theme of the | |
quote on social media, invoking it against the president on a wide | |
range of political hits. | |
And Trump’s allies are trying to make Biden disaffection among | |
minorities and young voters part of their messaging: shows a White | |
woman making calls from what’s supposed to be a Biden-Harris campaign | |
office. | |
“Yeah, yeah — I voted for Biden last time,” a man’s voice says. | |
“That’s fantastic!” the woman says. | |
“Is it?” he says, complaining about “handouts” for immigrants | |
while he is struggling to pay his bills. “Things were better before | |
Biden. I’m voting for Trump.” The ad ends with the text of a | |
headline on screen that reads: “Black, Hispanic, Young Voters | |
Abandon Biden.” | |
Already, several top Democrats tell CNN they are concerned about the | |
effect on Black turnout for their party if Trump picks South Carolina | |
Sen. Tim Scott as his running mate. | |
Even Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a 37-year-old Black Democrat,� | |
told CNN that he has one friend who is a Scott fan. | |
But, the mayor insisted, the appeal would be limited. | |
“Tim Scott’s got no juice,” Johnson said. | |
Reaching out to Black men | |
How to better reach Black men has become something of an obsession for | |
Harris, advisers say. | |
Her staff has put together countless dinners with Black male leaders in | |
politics, culture and business, both at her official residence at the | |
Naval Observatory in Washington and when she is back home for weekends | |
in Los Angeles. They’ve come to call these the “extraordinary | |
gentlemen” dinners. | |
She asks them what she should say, how she should say it. She urges | |
them to get in league with her, like when she appeared on comedian D.L. | |
Hughley’s radio show shortly after the “extraordinary gentlemen” | |
conversation he was part of last year at the Naval Observatory. And | |
some she calls or follows up with individually, like when she took an | |
hour on her most recent trip back to Los Angeles in April to talk with | |
Mav Carter, LeBron James’ business partner. | |
Though Garin told CNN his focus groups have not measured a larger | |
drop-off among Black men specifically for Harris, people who have | |
spoken to her say the vice president herself and multiple people around | |
her remain watchful about anecdotal evidence about Black men’s | |
response to a Black woman in power — and to her specifically. | |
“We cannot escape and we should not try to escape those | |
conversations,” said Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is | |
Black, while acknowledging, “There is no voice that is going to be | |
able to touch every part of the electorate, and Black men are not alone | |
in that regard.” | |
When CNN asked Harris about those concerns about connecting with Black | |
men, her answer was firm. | |
“I don’t agree with it. And it’s not been my experience. It’s | |
literally not been my experience,” Harris said. “If you think about | |
the issues that are important, I’ll just tell you based on my own | |
experiences politically and personally, I don’t agree with the | |
premise.” | |
Focus on Black wealth | |
Prepping for a meeting last year, Harris was grilling staff on the | |
Small Business Administration website. What statistics did they have on | |
who was visiting it? How easy was it to navigate? She’d already moved | |
on by the time she was asking, pushing staff to get a direct number or | |
email address she could give out to the 30 Black men, ages 18 to 35, | |
whom she gathered in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower | |
Executive Office Building. | |
But it wasn’t long before someone mentioned her “Kamala the cop” | |
reputation from her old days as a prosecutor. | |
Rashad Robinson, the president of the activist group Color of Change,� | |
who helped organize the session for her, had urged her to talk about | |
how the world had changed — how, he said, “there were no | |
progressive prosecutors when she was coming up, and if there were, she | |
would have been one.” | |
Harris did some of that. But mostly she redirected the conversation | |
about justice to jobs and economics, citing numbers about environmental | |
and economic opportunities opened up by the Inflation Reduction Act, or | |
about how Black unemployment is higher than unemployment overall. | |
Biden has been talking about building Black wealth, funding for | |
historically Black colleges and universities, and programs like the | |
billions of dollars going into replacing lead pipes in underserved | |
communities that he touted last week on a trip to North Carolina — a | |
program that both creates jobs for those putting in new pipes and is | |
better for the health of those who will now have cleaner drinking | |
water. | |
Harris has taken a more granular approach, pushing for more talk on | |
access to capital, raising credit scores, tackling housing costs. | |
In part, that is from watching Trump. As she tells staff, he doesn’t | |
have the right message — and she too rolls her eyes at his big policy | |
proposal for Black men so far being a trip to Philadelphia to promote a | |
$400 gold sneaker — but at least he is seeming to talk to them. | |
Her “economic opportunity tour” (government-speak for a | |
campaign-minded focus on Black men that started in Atlanta before this | |
stop in Detroit, and which will go next to Milwaukee, with an emphasis | |
throughout on Black entrepreneurs) grew out of that. No victory tour. | |
No grand pronouncements. Talking directly to and with Black men about | |
what they needed, what the administration could help them access and | |
what more needed to be done. | |
“The work we are doing to extend access to capital is tapping into | |
the ambition to exist, the aspirations that exist, and then giving | |
people the resources that are necessary — money and other | |
resources — to actually achieve success,” Harris said in a | |
podcast geared for Black entrepreneurs she recorded live on stage in | |
Atlanta on the first stop of the tour last week. | |
More than Black or White, red or blue, said John Hope Bryant — the | |
CEO of Bryant Ventures and Operation HOPE, who met with Harris ahead of | |
the first stop — “what I’ve told the vice president is: The color | |
is green.” | |
“The president has to be talking about having a global vision and all | |
that stuff,” Bryant said. “She can roll up her sleeves a little bit | |
and get down to strategy and tactics.” | |
Bryant said he ran through a series of charts like the effects of | |
raising a community’s average credit score, and he said he was | |
impressed with Harris’s response: “Send me that.” | |
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