The goal is not necessarily to win the African American vote in 2020 — an implausible outcome — but to simply raise Trump’s share a few percentage points from the 8 percent he received in 2016. If Trump can take his African American vote share from single digits to the low teens, it could give him a boost in key states that are likely to decide the outcome of the election.
Each center will double as a field office and a home base for the campaign’s “Black Voices for Trump” coalition, which has already started advertising with African American-operated radio stations and newspapers. Trump traveled to Atlanta last November to kick off the coalition alongside his campaign’s most high-profile black surrogates, some of whom will be dispatched to these new spaces for meet-and-greets and outreach events.
“These are, kind of, unprecedented structural layout designs to get us into the community so you can … have a center spot where the black community can come in and learn about what the president has done and help push forward his agenda,” said a senior Trump campaign official.
The centers will distribute pamphlets and sell merchandise, including hats and sweatshirts embroidered with the word “woke.” Asked to define “woke culture” as it relates to the president’s bid for reelection, a second campaign official — who is African American — said reporters should “ask a black person.”
“This concept by itself is a woke concept in the fact that for decades you have had a community that has been controlled by the Democratic Party,“ said Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign. „Republicans haven’t even gone into deliver their message. Now, we have a Republican who is actually going to the community to deliver the message and ask for the vote.“
Trump’s advisers contend that the current political landscape is ripe for Republican gains this cycle — including at the presidential level. So far, the campaign has focused its efforts in urban areas like Miami, Cleveland, Detroit and Charlotte.
“There’s been no activity in these markets for Republicans for a very long time and this is really more than a toe in the water. It’s a whole foot in the water,’ said a third senior campaign official.
Much of the Trump campaign’s outreach to black voters has come on the heels of polls that show rising dissatisfaction among black voters with the current candidates running for president. A survey released this week by the political action committee BlackPAC, a left-leaning political group, found that more than one in three black voters wished “someone else” had made a play for the White House, and 12 percent said they plan to vote for Trump. Two additional polls by Emerson and Rasmussen showed the president earning 30 percent support among black voters earlier this year, though both outlets have faced questions about their methods.
„At minimum, we’re double from where we were in 2016,“ said campaign manager Brad Parscale at a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, insisting that the president’s approval among African Americans goes up “40 to 50 points” when poll tested “directly” instead of “through a media filter.
Democrats have expressed immense skepticism that Trump can make serious inroads with black voters, who, they insist, will not forget that about the president’s track record of racially-charged remarks — such as his contention that Baltimore is a “rat and rodent infested mess” or that good people existed on “both sides” of the white nationalist march that left one person dead in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.
At the White House, senior adviser Jared Kushner has served as the architect of the Trump campaign’s strategy to woo African American voters. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was a driving force behind the administration’s push to pass bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation last year and has been urging Trump to make a serious play for black voters in 2020. Kushner and his allies argue that economic conditions — most notably, the historically low black unemployment rate — have the potential to shepherd new voters into the GOP.
As recently as last week, Kushner was behind a flurry presidential pardons and commutations issued that included Tynice Nichole Hall, an African American woman who served 14 years in prison on non-violent drug charges. The Trump campaign also ran a 30-second spot during this year’s Super Bowl featuring Alice Marie Johnson, another non-violent drug offender freed by the president.
“Thanks to President Trump, people like Alice are getting a second chance,” read part of a pamphlet that the campaign plans to distribute at its “black voices” community centers.
Source: politico.com
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