Harris campaign rolls out new push to shore up Black men

Kamala Harris, looking at daunting polling that shows she could draw some of the softest support for a Democratic nominee among Black men, is rolling out new efforts to shore up support with this key voting bloc.

In the coming days, Harris plans several campaign events and policy proposals designed to appeal to Black men. She plans to announce three new policy prescriptions: providing 1 million small business loans that are forgivable up to $20,000, training and mentorship programs that would help give Black men a leg up in jumping into “high-demand” industries and launching an initiative focused on health issues that disproportionately impact Black men.

She will also tape a town hall with Charlamagne tha God, co-host of the popular Breakfast Club program, on Tuesday in Detroit. And the campaign is also announcing organizing events tailored to Black men, ads that feature local Black men in testimonials and new “Black Men Huddle Up” events with star athletes this week in Charlotte, Detroit, Atlanta and Philadelphia.

Quentin Fulks, the campaign’s principal deputy campaign manager, said that the campaign is trying to answer, “What is holding Black men back in this country in regards to being able to achieve economic well-being?” He added that the revamped focus in the last weeks of the campaign on Black men is also an attempt to fix the larger issue of a lack of interest and investment in the constituency from Democrats for years.

“There has to be a reprioritization of speaking to both Black men and Black women in America when it comes to a lot of the challenges that they face,” Fulks said.

It comes as recent polling from CBS News and the New York Times/Siena Poll suggests that, though the vice president is winning the majority of Black men, she is so far well behind the kinds of numbers the party drew in 2020 and 2016. The latter survey, which included an oversample of Black voters, found the support for Harris drew just 78 percent support — in past elections, Democrats have drawn 90 percent of Black voters.

One of the key ways the campaign had hoped to fire up Black voters was by deploying former President Barack Obama in a barnstorm of swing states. But when he delivered a “tough talk” to campaign volunteers in Pittsburgh on Thursday about how Black men needed to show stronger support for Harris instead of coming up with “reasons and excuses” not to support her, it sparked a controversy about whether that scolding was turning off the very voters she was trying to reach.

“I think it’s whack,” said Charlamagne, who was previously critical of President Joe Biden but has backed Harris once she topped the ticket.

Others said they weren’t surprised by Obama’s comments at all.

“The lecturing thing he did — that's crazy, like, that's the absolute wrong thing to do,” said a veteran Democratic strategist and former Obama White House official granted anonymity to speak freely about what he sees as an ongoing problem for the party.

“He’s always had a blind spot for Black men,” he said of his former boss. “He doesn't quite understand the way we see the world.”

Others defended Obama’s comments, both publicly and privately as a conversation that has been taken out of context. And that the first Black president talking to Black men at this late in the juncture, with the polls as shaky as they are, isn't going to be all sunshine and rainbows. “His tone was like an elder, like a statesman, like a father,” said another former senior Obama official granted anonymity to be blunt about their view of the remarks. “It was coming from a place of love. It's a way of communicating to family.”

The Trump campaign seized on the controversy around Obama's remarks calling the comments "insulting" and "demeaning," according to a statement from its Black Men for Trump Advisory Board. "Black Americans are not a monolith, and we don’t owe our votes to any candidate just because they 'look like us.'"

But even with the Harris campaign's new policies and messaging, there is real concern, even among Harris allies, that this push to woo Black men is happening far too late in the campaign.

“Wow, it’s the last three weeks…ballots are in mailboxes,” said Mandela Barnes, a Harris supporter and former lieutenant governor of Wisconsin. “We shouldn't be here having to break the glass because we’ve reached the emergency point.”

While he adds there is time in the campaign’s final sprint to connect with some Black voters who have fallen away from the party, he hopes the Harris campaign is going to work with urgency.

Harris aides and allies point out that she was voicing concerns about how Black men view the Democratic Party for years. That spurred dinner conversations at the Naval Observatory with Black men, roundtables about possible economic opportunities for Black men and eventually an economic tour tailored to Black men last year.

“I'm not worried about the 14 percent of Black men who may vote for Donald Trump. That's fool's gold. That's missing the forest for the trees,” Cornell Belcher, who polled for the Obama campaign for both of those successful campaigns. “I'm more concerned if African-American turnout in Milwaukee [for example], which it has been, runs 10 or more points behind that of white voters. That's how she loses this race.”

But, Belcher adds, Black men's support for Harris is still much closer to Black women than the gender gap in other demographic groups.

And if Harris hopes to defeat Trump in a mere few weeks, she will need every Black voter in a swing state she can get.

Harris spent time on Sunday at Koinonia Christian Center, a predominantly African American church in Greenville, North Carolina, a key battle state with a large number of Black voters. She railed against Trump for spreading disinformation about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene, which ravaged the state. Later in the evening she spoke at a rally at East Carolina University where she blasted Trump for not releasing his medical information, as she did over the weekend, with her doctor saying she is in “excellent health.”

On Monday she returns to Pennsylvania, another key battleground state, where she’s expected to hold another rally in the evening, but also hold a smaller gathering to speak with a group of Black men in Erie.

The eleventh hour outreach by the Harris campaign comes as rumblings have grown louder about what many say is the party’s lackadaisical approach to courting Black men.

Some top Democrats, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the race, told POLITICO they had not seen the type of investments necessary to get Black voters to the polls when Biden was the standard-bearer. Those same Democrats also expressed frustration that Harris' campaign doesn't feel that different.

Still, there are those in the party that feel confident Harris can bring those voters home with the right message.

“Donald Trump has a documented history of racism, of not supporting the Black community or Black men for that matter,” said Pennsylvania's Lt. Gov. Austin Davis. “There's a subset of folks who really just want to nitpick everything that Kamala Harris wants to do.”’

He points to Harris kicking off a nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour that was focused on Black entrepreneurs earlier this year, before ascending to the top of the ticket this summer. Davis also notes that Harris’ economic agenda includes subsidies for first-time home buyers and $50,000 in tax incentives for those starting a small business as evidence of policies Harris is pushing that will help Black Americans.

Some in the party think that's a better approach than urging Black men to stop making "excuses."

“When you got to guilt voters into voting for you, you’re already losing,” said Nina Turner, a prominent progressive activist and former state senator of Ohio.