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Vice President Kamala Harris made a sweeping push on Monday to energize Black voters, among whom she faces slipping support, unveiling a plan to bolster the finances of Black men, appearing in interviews with two Black media outlets and releasing a pair of ads in battleground states targeted to that crucial voting group.
Taken together, Ms. Harris’s blitz put forward a broad argument that her administration would deliver meaningful policy changes for Black Americans and that former President Donald J. Trump was making empty promises that contradict his history of racist remarks.
“There is a very big difference between Donald Trump and how I will be president of the United States,” she said, citing his false claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio and detailing her plans to cut taxes for the middle class during an appearance on The Shade Room, a digital entertainment publication with more than 29 million followers on Instagram.
“And I cannot impress upon people enough that this is somebody — Donald Trump — who intends to take us backward,” she added.
The Harris campaign is facing pressure to shore up support from voters of color, who are normally reliable Democratic constituencies, and from Black men in particular. Polls show that Ms. Harris is receiving significantly lower support from Black men than President Biden did in 2020. The slip from Mr. Biden’s 2020 numbers among that voting bloc is striking: 70 percent said they would vote for Ms. Harris in November, down from Mr. Biden’s 85 percent in 2020.
In her interview with Justin Carter of The Shade Room, Ms. Harris acknowledged the challenge, saying: “Black men are no different from anybody else. They expect that you have to earn their vote.”
The most substantive piece of the Monday rollout was the economic plan targeted to those male voters.
The plan, called the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” expands upon Ms. Harris’s “opportunity economy” pitch, building upon efforts to address the unique barriers that the demographic faces in starting businesses and building wealth.
Ms. Harris’s plan calls for providing one million loans that would forgive up to $20,000 for Black entrepreneurs and people of other races to start a business, in an effort to close the capital gap that Black people often face.
The plan calls for expanding access to affordable banking options that will allow Black men and others to tap into more capital that they often cannot access because of high fees and other barriers. The plan also promises to devise a regulatory framework for protecting cryptocurrency assets, which more than 20 percent of Black Americans own or have owned.
Ms. Harris’s proposals also seek to create more mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities, and call for new investments to help more Black men become teachers. And the plan would begin a health initiative focused on the diseases that disproportionately affect Black people — such as sickle cell, diabetes and prostate cancer — by expanding preventive screening programs.
Under the plan, Ms. Harris also pledges to legalize marijuana nationally and to ensure that Black men, who were once disproportionately jailed for using and distributing marijuana, can benefit from its business potential.
Her softening support among Black men has so alarmed Democrats that former President Barack Obama issued an urgent call last week for the voting bloc to drop “excuses” and rethink their reluctance to support the vice president. (Ms. Harris dodged when asked on The Shade Room whether she agreed with Mr. Obama’s comments, saying that she was “very proud” to have his support.)
Black men, particularly younger ones, have been steadily slipping from the Democratic Party, frustrated that their experiences are not reflected in policy as much as other groups’. Ms. Harris’s economic proposal appears to confront those concerns head-on.
A statement from the campaign announcing the plan said Ms. Harris “knows that Black men have long felt that too often their voice in our political process has gone unheard and that there is so much untapped ambition and leadership within the Black male community.”
On Sunday, the vice president rallied voters in eastern North Carolina, a rural part of the battleground state with many Black residents who often say they feel ignored by national campaigns.
And on Monday, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking firm, the Harris campaign began airing a new ad in Philadelphia that seemed aimed in part at addressing the sexism that Mr. Obama suggested was weakening her support.
“She’s had our back since Day 1,” says the ad’s narrator, a community activist whose name is given as Anton. “Let’s be honest and get a reality check. Women know how to make things happen.”
The campaign also released an ad in Michigan targeting Black workers. The spot features a worker named Gerald arguing that Ms. Harris, unlike Mr. Trump, “has a history of fighting for the American worker.”
“The middle class built this country: our blood, our sweat, our tears,” he says. “We’re the ones that sacrificed to allow these billionaires to make their billions.”
Ms. Harris’s push for Black voters will continue on Tuesday at a town hall hosted by Charlamagne Tha God, host of “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated show that is particularly popular with Black millennials. Campaign surrogates will also sell her new policy plan as they address Black communities in battleground states.
“The vice president is going to continue to talk about what she plans to do for all Americans. But I think that we believe, and the vice president believes, it is absolutely OK to talk about how this policy agenda is going to change the lives of millions of Black men once she’s able to get it done as president,” said Quentin Fulks, her principal deputy campaign manager.
The plan reflects a series of issues that Ms. Harris has heard firsthand in conversations with Black men across the country, the campaign said, particularly during a nationwide “Economic Opportunity Tour” she began last spring. During those events, she discussed the Biden administration’s accomplishments, including building wealth and increasing access to capital for minority-owned small businesses.
Still, Mr. Trump has been able to make inroads with Black Americans by pitching himself as stronger on the economy.
Mr. Trump and his allies have made the push for Black men by marketing gold sneakers to them, campaigning with rappers and claiming without evidence that those who cross the border are taking what he called “Black jobs.” Mr. Trump’s surrogates have held listening sessions in a cigar bar in Philadelphia while contending that the Democratic Party has abandoned Black voters.
In another interview released on Monday, the pundit Roland Martin asked Ms. Harris what she made of Mr. Trump’s focus on Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia for his false claims about voter fraud in 2020, and of his comments that “our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president.”
She did not use the word “racist” in her response but suggested that race was implicitly a factor in his choosing to talk about those cities, which have large Black populations.
“If you just look at where the stars are in the sky, don’t look at them as just random things,” Ms. Harris said. “Look at the constellation: What does it show you?”
Maya King contributed reporting from Philadelphia and Atlanta.
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