MILWAUKEE — After watching African American voters routinely support their opponents for generations, Black Republican leaders gathering this week in Milwaukee for the GOP’s national convention said they are beginning to see cracks in the Democratic dominance.
One group trying to drive the wedge politically is being led by Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who two years ago unsuccessfully ran to be the Republican Party nominee for governor. On Tuesday, Irvin, who is chairman of the Black Republican Mayors Association, huddled in Milwaukee with GOP mayors, delegates and members of Congress from across the nation to discuss how best to attract Black voters to vote for Republican candidates.
“We give a conservative voice to Black voters across the country,” Irvin said. “The Black vote is how (President) Joe Biden eked out his win four years ago and so if that same Black vote decides that Biden hasn’t done what they need to uplift the Black community, that vote goes somewhere else. Guess what? The other team is going to win.”
For Irvin, the mayors association event was historic because he couldn’t recall another time Black Republicans had come together at the Republican National Convention to talk about unity under the GOP banner.
Some polling suggests the effort to attract more Black voters to back Republicans in November is not just wishful thinking.
A November 2023 New York Times and Siena College poll revealed that 22% of Black voters in six battleground states said they would support former President Donald Trump versus Biden in 2024. The Pew Research Center has reported that just 6% of Black voters nationally backed Trump in 2016 and 8% voted for him in 2020.
While Black voters will undoubtedly back Biden and most Democratic candidates en masse this fall, Irvin said he thinks Republicans are beginning to become more attractive and it’s “the beginning of a movement that I don’t think will stop.”
Among the kinds of voters that Irvin is talking about is Antonio Perkins, who works at a barbershop on North Martin Luther King Drive in Milwaukee.
Perkins was born and grew up in the community he now serves and said that the neighborhood has gotten steadily worse.
“We have more problems with employment, health care and crime,” Perkins said. “You don’t see as many thriving businesses as in the past.”
Perkins has voted Democrat his whole life but now he is unsure how he will vote in November, he said. Biden has not helped his community but he’s not sure if Trump will either.
“I know I will vote but I don’t know for whom just yet,” Perkins said.
On Wednesday, outside the Fiserv Forum where the main RNC events are taking place, an elderly Black woman who is a Trump supporter encountered a protester on West Wisconsin Avenue holding a sign that read “GOP = Fascists.”
“You don’t know Trump. You can’t hate him,” said the woman, who declined to identify herself.
“I love you,” she told the protester, who ignored her. “But you’re wrong.”
Leechia Wilder, a delegate from Missouri, said she moved from Chicago in 2013 and found a better life for herself there and credits no longer living in a Democratic stronghold like Chicago.
“People need to demand better for themselves and if that means joining the Republican Party, for a hope for a better future, we got to give them the chance,” Wilder said.
P. Rae Easley, an RNC alternative delegate from Chicago, said Trump’s popularity can be attributed to the Republican presidential nominee’s “alpha male” personality.
“He does not mind telling people the truth and he’s a true American just like we are,” she said.
Shalira Taylor-Jackson, a delegate from Ohio, said it’s important for Black Americans to look at the issues the Republican Party is prioritizing. She noted a Trump-era executive order made following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of a police officer that resulted in the Justice Department requiring the certification of thousands of law enforcement agencies to improve accountability and build trust with the communities they serve.
“The people see what they voted for in the last four years and I believe that they’re going to go back and vote for Trump this year,” Taylor-Jackson said.
Erik Ngutse, the GOP’s director of community engagement in Wisconsin, primarily works with Black and brown communities. Ngutse thinks African Americans as a collective have the “least political power but the most possible power.” He has noticed people in the community do not see Trump as racist or choose to look beyond it, he said.
“The issue with the Democrats is that they have called those they dislike racist, which has worked for a long time but not anymore. I don’t hear people in this area saying he is racist because they see through his policies, which aren’t racist,” Ngutse said.
Many Black Republicans firmly think that Black voters who previously voted Democrat in 2020 can significantly influence this election, even winning it for the GOP.
“If 10% of registered Black voters vote for Trump in November, the Democrats are done,” Wilder said.
Malavika Ramakrishnan is a freelance writer.
