Republicans’ efforts to win over black voters during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee may have been unsuccessful as GOP members failed to showcase their party’s diversity and resorted to controversial talking points.
Although former President Trump hopes to steal the support of black voters from Democrats this year, only eight of the speakers at the convention were black, and seven spoke on the first night, when viewership is often at its lowest. There was no elected black woman to speak at the convention – a stark contrast to the DNC, where Vice President Harris will speak.
“This is a miscalculation on the part of the Republican Party,” Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, told The Hill. “There is no real outreach to black people coming from the Republican National Convention, and their efforts to reach out to us through this appearance at the RNC are as tasteless as Trump’s tan.”
The Republican Party’s efforts to appeal to black voters included launching a black voter outreach initiative the week before the RNC and including black voices, particularly reality TV star and model Amber Rose.
In her speech, Rose said she had “found her people” among Trump supporters and realized that the media was wrong about Trump.
Some prominent Republicans applauded Rose’s speech; Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) called the influencer’s remarks “heartwarming.”
“I thought her speech was great. I thought she did a fantastic job,” she told The Hill in Milwaukee this week, adding that she “watched everything.”
Her inclusion in the Republican Party is seen as part of a broader initiative to raise the party’s appeal.
“We’re reaching out to non-traditional Republican voters,” said Washington State Rep. Jim Walsh, a delegate and chairman of the state Republican Party, when asked why Rose is on the convention’s speaker list. “We’ve done that in the district I represent in the Washington Legislature.”
“It was a deep blue district for 70 years, and about eight years ago we made it a safe red district. We did that by appealing to people who are not considered typical Republican voters,” he said, including “single mothers, a lot of ethnic minorities” and “a lot of union households.”
Republican House Majority Leader Tom Emmer argued Wednesday that Trump played a key role in increasing the party’s appeal and dismantling crucial voting blocs for Democrats, specifically mentioning black voters.
“Traditional Democratic voters, black voters, Asian voters, Hispanic voters, I would say even liberal Jews now, they don’t just come to us in this country … my grandfather’s Democratic Party has turned left,” he said at an event less than a mile from the RNC. “They can’t support the social agenda. They can’t support the economic agenda.”
“Now it’s our job to meet them where they are and explain to them who we are and why we’re the better choice. That started with finding candidates who looked and sounded more like the constituencies they wanted to represent,” Emmer said. “I think the results over the last five years have been incredible, and I would argue that this election will take them to a whole new level.”
However, some doubted the impact of efforts such as the appointment of Rose – whom some conservatives singled out for her former interest group on women’s issues – on younger and minority voters. At the same time, there are also Worries about how a focus on diversifying the party could impact its base.
“I didn’t know who she was, and you know, I understand … getting young people involved and enlarging the tent, but generally speaking, it doesn’t work,” Republican Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.) told The Hill.
“But we should be looking after our base. That’s what worries me more,” he said, adding: “Twenty million evangelical Christians chose not to vote last time – that’s why Joe Biden is in the White House. So if we disregard our base, it will hurt us.”
Robinson of the Black Male Voter Project added that black voters – and men in particular – were not paying attention to the convention.
“Black men don’t watch these conventions,” Robinson said. “This is not a convention for black men. This is not a convention to attract black men. It’s a convention for black men who are married to white women to make their white friends feel like they’re reaching black men.”
Nevertheless, Trump is intensively courting the support of black male voters, while there is growing dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party in society.
Although 64 percent of black women said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today, according to a novel survey from The CutThis figure is significantly lower than the 95 percent who supported him in 2020. Meanwhile, an April Wall Street Journal: Survey on swing states found that about 30 percent of black men said they would either definitely or probably vote for Trump. In 2020, Trump received about 12 percent support from black men.
He had originally hinted that he was considering Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as his running mate, but that idea was dashed when Sen. J.D. Vance was announced as the vice presidential nominee earlier this week. Nevertheless, Scott delivered an impassioned speech on Monday in which he called Trump an “American lion.”
Representative Wesley Hunt (Republican of Texas) invoked his black identity in his own speech.
“I am the great-great-grandson of a slave. I am the son of a retired lieutenant colonel. I am a child of West Point, like my other two siblings. And I risked my life in battle to preserve our nation,” Hunt said, adding that Trump is now risking his life for the nation.
But using these black men to appeal to voters may not have the impact Republicans want, says Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright.
“The sad thing about their strategy to engage black people is that it doesn’t even begin to address the needs and desires of the generation and the struggles that we’ve had to fight from the time we were here in this country to today,” Seawright said. “It certainly doesn’t address the fact that many of the struggles that we’re fighting now are a direct result of their extreme measures and extreme policies and extreme politicians who are working day and night to undermine the progress that we’ve made in this country.”
