![]() ![]() ![]() Opportunity Zones, the federal program created under the 2017 tax overhaul with the goal of boosting investment in low-income communities, has also figured prominently in campaign messaging to communities of color. The campaign has centered its pitch around Trump’s support for historically Black colleges and universities the criminal justice reform bill that Congress passed and he signed last year and the once-record low unemployment rate among Black Americans reached just before the pandemic that Trump has cited as proof economic conditions have improved under his watch. President Donald Trump delivers a speech following a tour of Fincantieri Marinette Marine in Marinette, Wisconsin, on June 25, 2020. “There was nothing nearly as organized and as structured as we have today, mainly because the president was funding his own campaign at the beginning” of his 2016 run and didn’t have the resources to target specific voting groups, Pierson said. A similar effort did not exist in 2016, said Katrina Pierson, a senior campaign adviser who served as Trump’s national spokesperson during his first presidential run. Last year, months before the pandemic and protests, Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign launched a program focused on increasing Black turnout, called Black Voices for Trump. Trump will need to win those states and other key swing states to win reelection. That year, overall Black turnout dropped 7 percentage points from 2012, the biggest drop in decades 1.6 million Black voters who had backed Obama in 2012 did not vote in 2016, a deciding factor in Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s losses in battleground states like Wisconsin and Michigan. “If saw him handle this situation in a manner that was more sensitive to the raw emotions of Black America, they probably would be willing to come to his defense much more,” Jackson said.īoth Republicans and Democrats are building outreach campaigns around Black voters in the wake of the 2016 election. ![]() “The little inroads that I made all washed away instantaneously.” Sean Jackson, the chairman of the Black Republican Caucus of Florida, said the way Trump has handled both crises have made it harder for him to convince conservative Black voters in his state to ignore Trump’s rhetoric and focus on his policies.īefore the protests started, “folks were starting to get to the point of saying we think you may be right, we’ll start ignoring the stupidity and the jibber jabber that comes out of the White House,” Jackson said. But the campaign’s plans for a more robust approach than the one Trump took four years ago have been complicated by the president’s struggle to respond to nationwide protests over racial injustice and a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting people of color. The Trump campaign entered 2020 hoping to boost the president’s support among Black voters. “What do you have to lose,” he liked to ask, by voting for a Republican after years of broken promises from the Democratic Party?Įight percent of Black voters supported Trump in 2016, more than supported the Republican nominees who ran against President Barack Obama in 20, but less than backed President George W. President Donald Trump’s message to Black voters in 2016 was characteristically blunt. ![]()
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