‘I am worried about turnout in Detroit’: Dems move to shore up Harris’ base in Michigan

DETROIT — Democrats are deploying prominent Black surrogates to Michigan to deliver an urgent plea: Black men, we need you.

It’s a concerted push, involving the likes of NBA hall-of-famer Magic Johnson, New York Attorney General Tish James, Democratic Party elder Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), Gen-Z Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and actress Kerry Washington in Detroit, which is nearly 80 percent Black, and the surrounding area. And it’s the latest sign that the Kamala Harris campaign — and Democrats more broadly — see trouble on the horizon. Harris has built up a small advantage in Michigan, but soft turnout among Black voters could cause that lead to vanish in the face of a motivated Republican base.

Three dozen Black Detroiters, including strategists, activists, clergy, elected officials and likely voters, the vast majority of them men, told POLITICO about their concerns with the campaign's outreach to Black voters. Some said their appeals come off as condescending. Others added that party officials and surrogates often question their intelligence if they inquire about how their lives will change under a Harris administration. Others lament the campaign hasn’t reached out to enough well-known grassroots organizations, who hear firsthand about the apathy from Black voters in marginalized neighborhoods like Belmont and Delray.

Moreover there is concern that messaging targeting Black men is not being prioritized and that the campaign is favoring other core constituencies of the Democratic base like suburban women.

“I am worried about turnout in Detroit. I think it's real,” said Jamal Simmons, a former communications director for the vice president and a Detroit native. “Do they have the machine to turn people out?”

“There are concerns and they’re not insignificant,” he added.

Few are predicting Harris will lose the city of Detroit, which hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1957. But turnout is key. When turnout in Detroit is above 50 percent, Democrats win the state, like four years ago when now-President Joe Biden got just under 51 percent in the city and secured victory by more than 154,000 votes. In 2016 turnout here was just over 48 percent, and Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by roughly 11,000 votes — low turnout among African Americans was at least partially blamed for the loss.

Still, the Harris campaign scoffs at the notion that former President Donald Trump's overtures are landing with Black voters.

“Trump is more interested in using us as a backdrop than addressing Black men’s concerns in Michigan, but no amount of photo ops changes Trump’s record spiking unemployment and his Project 2025 plans to take away our health care,” said Michigan Senior Adviser Eddie McDonald in a statement.

The Harris campaign’s own Black voter outreach strategy in Detroit includes a combination of traditional efforts like door knocking and literature drops in predominantly Black neighborhoods and non-traditional events like local house parties.

The vice president has also woven in press hits that might help with this demographic, like when she appeared on the “ All The Smoke ” podcast hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. During that interview, she discussed her biracial identity and why cannabis should be legalized.

And the campaign believes that a combination of social events with local influencers and flying in high–profile surrogates will generate more excitement for Harris in the campaign’s final sprint. James, who has put Trump on the stand over his business dealings in New York, came to a performing arts and cultural venue Artist Village in Detroit's revitalized Northwest neighborhood on a balmy Sunday afternoon to emphasize the importance of helping mobilize hard-to-reach voters in their communities.

“I believe in the power of Black men,” James said in an appeal to the nearly 50 grassroots organizers, mostly Black men, assembled to talk about ways to boost excitement among indifferent voters in their communities. “We need you in this struggle.”

James said she understood why many questioned whether the Democratic Party takes them for granted or if Harris herself is working hard enough to earn their vote, before casting Trump as a “broken man.”

By the time she wrapped her 10-minute remarks, James exited the stage to a standing ovation.

Recent polling of Black Americans' views of the vice president show that both Black men and women overwhelmingly support Harris over Trump. According to the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research , 78 percent of Black voters had a favorable view of Harris, compared with just 15 percent who had a favorable view of Trump. Black women favored Harris more than Black men, the survey found, which is in line with other polls.

It also found 18 percent of Black men viewed Trump favorably, which if it holds, would be a sharp uptick from his support in 2020.

Harris is making the same kinds of appeals James is, but she's just not doing it in front of the media, aides say, so she is free to engage in frank conversations.

But as the campaign draws to a close, Harris is laboring to both turn out her base while simultaneously expanding her appeals to skeptical working-class white voters. Harris' campaign stop last Friday held at a fire station at an inner-ring suburb of Detroit focused on how it was “so good to be in the house of labor” — a not-so-subtle nod that she’s gotten the backing of local unions while the national Teamsters and firefighters organizations declined to back her.

During a recent stop in Michigan that included a rally in Flint , another majority-Black city, Harris met with Muslim and Arab American leaders in an attempt to shore up another disgruntled constituency that has been critical of her stance on the Israel-Hamas war. Later that evening, Johnson, who played his college ball at Michigan State, introduced Harris to the crowd.

“Kamala’s opponent promised a lot of things last time to the Black community that he did not deliver on,” he said, without naming any specifics. “And we gotta make sure we help Black men understand that.”

That sort of negative-appeal approach can come off as patronizing, some of the Black men POLITICO interviewed say, and is wearing thin on an ever-growing segment of the party, even those who plan on supporting the vice president.

“When you come to Detroit and you don't meet with Detroit pastors, that's a layup that you missed hard,” said Bishop Cory Chavis of Victory Community Church, following a gathering of faith leaders for Harris, where the keynote speaker was Clyburn. Chavis said he appreciated Clyburn's presence, but face time with the vice president would have been more impactful.

And Democrats are also concerned that Trump's populist overtures in the state are reaching working-class voters. The former president and his running mate, JD Vance, have been routinely making stops in the state during the final stretch. Trump is scheduled to speak at the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday, and Vance visited Detroit’s Eastern Market to lead a discussion on the economy.

Detroit has been gutted by manufacturing losses over the past few decades, and his ability to persuasively connect unchecked immigration as the cause for lower wages resonates with Black voters who see deterioration of a once-prosperous life.

“As they letting us go, they’re getting a bus load of temporary workers — they're all Mexican, none of them speak English. So they don't care if we go on strike or not. We've been training these people to do our jobs,” Eric Mays, a 34-year-old Detroit Manufacturing Systems worker said at a gathering of mostly Black conservatives at the 180 Church on the city’s east side last week.

Trump visited the church in June where he took part in a Black voter outreach program . He also gave the church’s pastor Lorenzo Sewell a speaking slot at the Republican convention, where he praised Trump for coming to “the hood.”

Michigan’s Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist (D), the state’s highest-ranking Black official, said there is still time for the Harris campaign to engage and mobilize voters, and said her economic plan is a chief selling point, particularly for Black men looking to level up and own their own businesses.

“When you look at the $50,000 credit to start a business, that is a result of a series of conversations that Kamala Harris had with Black entrepreneurs,” he said, nodding to her Opportunity Agenda Tour the vice president launched prior to ascending to the top of the ticket. The second stop was at the city’s famed Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

“Ultimately … when people ask, 'Whatcha gonna do for me?' She is putting people on a path to wealth — that's what the plan is," he said.