During the 2019 NAACP convention which took place on July 24, 2019, in Detroit, Sen. Elizabeth Warren took part in a forum that was moderated by April Ryan. Warren and Ryan discussed many issues on interest to African American voters. Watch their conversation.
During the 2019 NAACP convention which took place on July 24, 2019, in Detroit, Sen. Bernie Sanders took part in a forum that was moderated by April Ryan. Sanders and Ryan discussed many issues on interest to African American voters. Watch their conversation below.
During the 2019 NAACP convention which took place on July 24, 2019, in Detroit, former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden took part in a forum that was moderated by April Ryan. Biden and Ryan discussed many issues on interest to African American voters. Watch their conversation below.
Civil Rights icon John Lewis came to Joe Biden's defense after Biden suffered backlash over his boasting of working with political adversaries, such as racist segregationists, as a lawmaker.
It’s time again for the event columnist Roger Simon described as “one of those all-too-rare, feel-good evenings in politics,” and this year it’s bigger than ever. “Jim Clyburn’s World Famous Fish Fry” will be held on Friday, June 21st during the 2019 South Carolina Democratic Weekend in Columbia, S.C., and it will be a “can’t miss” stop for any candidate seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
Twenty-two Democrats running for president in 2020 will attend House Majority Whip James Clyburn’s (D-S.C.) fish fry in South Carolina next Friday as they jockey for support in the early primary state.
The event is likely to be the largest gathering of the 2020 candidates so far this election cycle, as nearly the entire primary field will attend. The fish fry, founded 30 years ago, has steadily grown into a campaign staple every four years and comes shortly before the first primary debates later this month.
“Each candidate will be given a generous moment to address the audience. The candidates are then encouraged to enjoy the fried fish, join in the electric slide and take selfies with the attendees,” a press release for the event said.
The only major contender of the 24-candidate field to not have confirmed their attendance is Montana Gov. Steve Bullock.
Jim Clyburn began the fish fry nearly three decades ago as a thank you to his campaign workers and for folks who couldn’t afford to attend the South Carolina State Democratic Party dinner. This free event is known for tons of fried fish, the Electric Slide, and old-fashioned politicking.
U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-New Orleans, has been chosen as the first national co-chairman of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, The New York Times reported Friday (May 31). The selection could improve the former vice president’s stock with black voters and members of Congress at a time when two black Democrats, Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California, also are seeking the party’s nomination for president.
Richmond worked with Booker and Harris when he chaired the Congressional Black Caucus in 2017 and 2018, and Politico reported that he gave maximum monetary contributions to their campaigns. In August, he facilitated a question-and-answer session with another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who is white, at Dillard University in New Orleans.
But he also has been a vocal supporter of Biden, a white man who was a senator from Delaware before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president. Richmond was pushing Biden to run as early as 2016, the year Republican Donald Trump was elected president, and he formally endorsed Biden in April, Politico reported.
What will be his role in the Biden campaign? Richmond told The Times: “My biggest strength is offering political advice and using my political instincts to come up with strategy, and not just strategy in the African-American community. I think the real strength is in the South and other parts of the country."
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg pledged on Tuesday to do more to reach out to African-American voters, laying out specifics of how he'll address the lack of diversity.
"We need to invite more and more people into the process. We do it through our team and the team that we're building," Buttigieg told CNN's Poppy Harlow and John Avlon on "New Day."
The mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said he needs to do better when it comes to reaching out to African-American voters and increasing the diversity of the crowd at his campaign events.
"I think we need to do better," Buttigieg told CNN. "As I've been on the trail, we found, to some extent, it depends on geography. We had a very diverse crowd at my first stop in Nevada, but less so in South Carolina. One of the most important things you can achieve in South Carolina is engage with African-American voters in particular, which represents such an important part of our party's coalition."
Buttigieg said his outreach to African-American voters will include ensuring his campaign addresses "issues that disproportionately affect families of color," like housing, income, entrepreneurship and criminal justice reform.
He also plans to reach out to African-American voters by "working to build a diverse team within our organization."
"Some of it is quantity time. Where do you go on these campaign visits? They're very traditional and important places where you can engage in voters of color, from church networks to some of the associations that have built up around the search for justice," Buttigieg said.
"But also, there's a bit of a generational divide here. Younger people of color are less likely to organize in some of the traditional structures that would be true for my parents' generation. And that's where digital organization and reaching into different media venues is going to be important to make those connections."
Asked if he was disappointed that his crowds have not been more diverse, Buttigieg said on Tuesday it means "we've got our work cut out for us."
In a video released on Saturday, the former first lady teamed up with the NAACP, the country's largest civil rights organization, in efforts to increase African-American voter turnout in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Check out the video below.
Former President Barack Obama has appearances in Wisconsin and Michigan on Friday aimed at boosting turnout to aid Democrats, including black voters.
Low turnout in Milwaukee by African-Americans proved costly for Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she narrowly lost Wisconsin. One analysis found turnout fell nearly 20 points compared to Obama’s 2012 run.
It was much the same story in Detroit, and Clinton also lost Michigan.
Obama’s Friday appearance at a Milwaukee high school in a majority black neighborhood is aimed at helping Democratic candidates including U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Tony Evers, who is challenging Republican Gov. Scott Walker.
The former president will be in Michigan later Friday for an event at a Detroit high school.
A group of students from a historically black university have filed a lawsuit alleging a southeast Texas county is suppressing the voting rights of its black residents.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Houston on Monday, five Prairie View A&M University students allege Waller County election officials are violating the civil rights of black students and residents in Prairie View — which is predominantly African-American — by not providing any early voting locations on campus or anywhere in the city during the first week of early voting, which started Monday.
In the second week of early voting, the county is providing five days in Prairie View, but two of them are off-campus and at a site that is not easily accessible to many students who lack transportation, according to the lawsuit.
Prairie View is located about 50 miles northwest of Houston. The historically black university, which has about 8,400 full and part-time students, represents a significant voting bloc in Waller County.
Read more: HBCU Students sue Texas county, allege voting rights violations
Election officials in Bunn, North Carolina removed a poll worker from an early voting site Thursday following allegations that she intimidated several African American voters.
The poll worker has been assigned to office duty away from the voting site pending a meeting Tuesday, the NC State Board of Elections confirmed to The News & Observer on Saturday. On Tuesday, voters who filed complaints will speak with members of the Franklin County Board of Elections.
Members of an African American political action committee, Franklin County PAC, accused the poll worker of repeatedly asking about a half dozen African American voters voters to spell their names on Wednesday, the first day of early voting across the state.
The voter complaint comes amid a highly sensitive atmosphere with accusations of voter suppression, fraud and intimidation targeting people of color in a number of states including, Georgia, North Dakota and North Carolina.
The State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement said on Saturday that the agency has been in contact with Lisa Goswick, the Franklin County elections director.
The state agency released a statement to The News & Observer:
“The poll worker in question was taken off of poll duty and is working in the county office until the County Board can meet to discuss the incident. It is our understanding that the County Board will hear from the poll worker involved to get the other side of the story. The board also will hear from several eyewitnesses to the events. Both the State and County Board take these allegations seriously and will continue to gather facts.”
A group representing black voters is suing the election commission in Tennessee's largest county, which includes Memphis, after thousands of registrations were deemed invalid by the commission.
The Tennessee Black Voter Project filed a lawsuit Monday in Shelby County Chancery Court asking a judge to allow the group to inspect voter registration forms that the county's Election Commission has rejected.
Groups including the Black Voter Project submitted more than 36,000 registrations to the Election Commission in Shelby County. But the commission said about 55 percent of them were invalid because they were incomplete, were duplicates from previously registered voters or had come from convicted felons.
The group wants to inspect records detailing why the applications were rejected.
Read more: Group sues Tennessee county over invalid voter registrations.
During an interview with NNPA (National Newspaper Publishers Association) Newswire Rep. James Clyburn (Dem, South Carolina) made three suggestions he thinks Democrats should follow to increase black voter turnout so that they can win big in the 2018 mid-terms. One was to advertise in the Black Press
From the NNPA Newswire interview:
...Democrats shouldn’t rely on an anti-President Donald Trump wave to get out the vote. Finally, Clyburn said that candidates must advertise in the Black Press, if they want to win in November.
“We are also talking about districts where Barack Obama won twice and where Hillary Clinton also won, but these voters don’t turn out for the so-called ‘off-year elections,’” Clyburn said. “We can’t let these voters feel like we’re taking them for granted.”
Clyburn, 78, said he was recently taken aback by one candidate, who said that he could win the Black vote by running on an anti-Trump platform.
“Wait one second,” Clyburn said that he told the individual. “We can’t just go around being ‘Republican-light.’ We have to be out there putting forth an alternative message, for our base, and we have to reach out to Black voters and let them know we’re not taking them or any of our base for granted.”
To that end, Clyburn said advertising campaigns must largely include the Black Press.
“It’s very, very important…Chairman Richmond and I have had candidates in and we’ve been telling them that one of the best ways to demonstrate that you’re not taking the Black vote for granted is to advertise in the Black Press,” Clyburn said.
The National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) is the oldest and largest trade group representing the Black Press, comprised of more than 200 Black-owned newspapers operating in the United States.
“I’ve been in [the Black Press]. My daughter and I ran a newspaper down South, so I know that candidates tend to take Black media for granted,” Clyburn said. “They tend to judge Black media the same way they do other media and you just can’t do that, because the business model is totally different.”
Each Sunday after attending Morris Brown A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., Clyburn said he and other churchgoers habitually pick up the local Black-owned newspaper.
“People tend to pay attention to the headlines, the stories and the ads in the Black Press so it’s vitally important that candidates know this,” Clyburn said.
The DNC's bid to energize African American turnout this fall began with these words from Chairman Tom Perez in Atlanta: "I am sorry."
Swanky fund-raisers don't often begin with an apology to the well-heeled donors who shelled out thousands of dollars to sip wine, eat steak, and listen to pep-rally speeches. But as he looked out over a predominantly black crowd gathered at the Georgia Aquarium on Thursday night, Tom Perez, the Democratic National Committee chairman, felt compelled to issue a mea culpa.
"I am sorry," Perez said.
At first, it seemed like Perez was voicing one more generalized regret for the 2016 election that put Donald Trump in the White House—the squandered opportunity that abruptly ended the Democrats' hold on the presidency and immediately put at risk its policy gains of the previous eight years.
Perez, however, soon made clear that his apology was much more specific. "We lost elections not only in November 2016, but we lost elections in the run-up because we stopped organizing," he said. "We stopped talking to people.
"We took too many people for granted," Perez continued, "and African Americans—our most loyal constituency—we all too frequently took for granted. That is a shame on us, folks, and for that I apologize. And for that I say, it will never happen again!"
Applause broke out before Perez could even finish his apology, heads nodding in acknowledgment and appreciation.
That he would choose this event, and this city, to try to make amends with black voters was significant. Thursday's gala was the party's first major 2018 fund-raiser to be held outside Washington, D.C., and the I Will Vote initiative it supported aims to bolster DNC efforts to register new voters; fight voter-suppression efforts in the United States; and, ultimately, turn out Democrats across the country in November.
High turnout among black voters was key to Barack Obama's two presidential victories, and dips in participation when he was not on the ballot contributed to the Democratic wipeouts in 2010 and 2014, and to Hillary Clinton's narrow losses in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in 2016. But there are signs of a revival, not only in response to Republican efforts to reverse Obama's legacy, but also in response to efforts to erect barriers to voting that disproportionately affect African Americans. In Virginia, strong black turnout helped elect Governor Ralph Northam and the state's second black lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, last November. A month later, black voters—and black women in particular—powered Doug Jones to victory over Roy Moore in Alabama's special Senate election.
This year, nowhere will black turnout be more crucial to Democratic hopes than in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams is vying to become the first African American woman elected governor of any state. Her nomination over Stacey Evans, a white woman, in May drew a surge of national attention, and the DNC's decision to hold Thursday's gala alongside an African American leadership summit in Atlanta brought major party donors to Abrams's home base.
As Bernie Sanders contemplates making another president bid in 2020, the Vermont senator still is searching for the right way to attract more black voters who backed Hillary Clinton and effectively denied him the Democratic nomination in 2016.
His challenge was on display in Mississippi this week, where he traveled to mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination but along the way managed a clumsy critique of the Democratic Party under the nation’s first black president.
Former President Barack Obama, Sanders said, was a “charismatic individual ... an extraordinary candidate, a brilliant man.” But “behind that reality,” Sanders said, Obama led a party whose “business model” has been a “failure” for more than a decade.
It served as the latest confirmation that Sanders, even as he tries for new footholds in the black community, hasn’t mastered his precarious relationship with a key Democratic Party constituency that he will need if he hopes to reshape the party going forward, much less make another presidential run in 2020.
Sanders, who is elected in Vermont as an independent but caucuses in Washington with Democrats, has been spending more time in places dominated by black voters, including Southern states where African Americans shape Democratic primaries.
Read more: Sanders strives to widen appeal to black voters
Even though Sen. McCaskill's issues engaging black voters is taking place in Missouri, this should be a cautionary tale for all Democrats nationwide. Yes, you have to reach to and engage other bases that might not usually vote democratic but don't forget your base. Black voters are starting to feel taken for granted and while they won't vote Republican they just may stay home. George L. Cook III African American Reports.
African American leaders in Missouri are frustrated with what they see as Sen. Claire McCaskill’s lackluster engagement with minority voters.
Frustrated enough that they refused to sign a letter pushing back against comments made last month by Bruce Franks, a prominent black activist and state legislator from St. Louis, who called on McCaskill to “show up” and earn the support of minority voters in her state.
“I’m going to vote for Claire, but Claire is going to have to bring her ass to St. Louis,” Franks said to applause at a town hall he hosted Feb. 17.
In response to Franks comments, McCaskill had asked African American elected officials in Kansas City and St. Louis to sign the letter.
Among those who were approached by McCaskill are U.S. Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City and Lacy Clay of St. Louis, and state Rep. Gail McCann Beatty, the minority leader in the Missouri House.
Each declined to sign.
“I’m 100 percent certain that nobody signed it,” Cleaver said in an interview Wednesday with The Kansas City Star. “We talked about it very seriously and strongly and every one of us said, ‘We’re going to support her, but signing this letter isn’t going to achieve what she wants. It’s just going to make people angry.’ ”
Cleaver said he’s sympathetic to McCaskill’s plight. She’s a Democrat running for re-election in a state Republican President Donald Trump won by nearly 19 points in 2016. He understands she must win over some right-leaning voters to survive.
But as McCaskill works to burnish her reputation as a centrist, Cleaver and other African American leaders said they worry she’ll leave minority voters on the left with the impression that she’s taking them for granted — and it could cost her turnout in the urban centers that are crucial to her base.
“The state is large and diverse, but she might need to take the campaign into the repair shop in the black communities,” Cleaver said. “I think if people see that she’s actually trying to win them over then I think it will be a benefit to her re-election.”
McCaskill’s campaign said she has a long record of standing with and fighting for Missouri’s African American community, starting with her time as a prosecutor and continuing with her work as a U.S. senator.
“Nothing has, or ever will, change that commitment,” said Meira Bernstein, McCaskill’s campaign spokeswoman, in a statement.
Read more: McCaskill asked black leaders to push back on criticism of her campaign. No one would.
Here's more confirmation of President Trump's delusional views about the relationship between himself and the African American community.
President Donald Trump bragged on Twitter that his approval rating with black Americans has doubled. It hasn't.
Only 15% of black Americans said they approved of Trump's job performance in the days following his inauguration last January — and it's only gone downhill from there. In the most recent Gallup weekly numbers, only 6% of black Americans said they approved of the President's job performance.
The most recent CNN polling, from December, shows that only 3% of black Americans said they approved of how Trump is handling his job nearly a year into his White House tenure.
A whopping 91% said they disapproved.
But that didn't stop Trump from tweeting on Tuesday morning that his approval among black Americans had doubled. "Unemployment for Black Americans is the lowest ever recorded. Trump approval ratings with Black Americans has doubled. Thank you, and it will get even (much) better!" he wrote.
It is true that black unemployment has fallen to 6.8% in the most recent data — the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began tracking the number in 1972 but still higher than the 4.1% national unemployment rate among all races.
