WHY IS NORTH CAROLINA KEY
TO A BIDEN-HARRIS VICTORY?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Vice President Kamala Harris is expected back in North Carolina for the fourth time this year, scheduled to visit Charlotte today to discuss
what the Biden Administration is doing about the climate crisis, environmental justice, and increasing access to capital in underserved communities.
She visited an elementary school in the Queen City last January, where she then announced new violence prevention measures and an allotment of federal mental health funding for North Carolina schools.
Harris will also open a “new coordinated campaign office” while in Charlotte, the first of ten scheduled to be opened across North Carolina to help re-elect the Biden-Harris ticket, in addition to other down ballot Democratic candidates.
She’ll be joined by Goldsboro native and former NC secretary of the Dept. of Environmental Quality, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael S. Regan, the first African-American to serve in that position.
The vice president was also just in Raleigh last week, along with Pres. Joe Biden, where the two talked about healthcare, and fundraised to the tune of $2.3 million. That joint appearance was held at Chavis Park Community Center, in the heart of Southeast Raleigh’s Black community. That appearance was Biden’s second in the state this year.
On March 1st, VP Harris visited Durham’s “Black Wall Street” to discuss Black economic development, entrepreneurship, and supporting Black small businesses.
Political observers agree multiple visits from the Biden Administration to the state signals that locking down North Carolina as battleground territory - Biden lost here to Republican Donald Trump by 1.4 % during the 2020 election - for the 2024 presidential rematch election, is a priority for the campaign. And for Democrats, there’s no locking down the Tar Heel State without capturing North Carolina’s important Black vote.
As of October 2022, North Carolina had 7.4 million registered voters. According to the NC Board of Elections, 34% of whom were Democrats. In the 2020 election, 68% of African-American voters, mostly Democrats, turned out.
The Biden-Harris campaign is moving early and aggressively in North Carolina amid reports that nationally, Black men are supporting Trump in greater percentages than ever before.
According to published reports, African-American men are “leaning more conservative than Black women,” with a recent Gallop poll showing Democrats losing their lead with Black voters by 20 points in the past three years. A NY Times/Siena College poll last month showed 23 percent of African-American voters supporting Trump if the election were held today.
Nationally, that’s a troubling 10 % jump from the 13 percent black voter support that the Republican former president received in 2020. VP Harris’ repeated visits to North Carolina are apparently designed to combat reported dissatisfaction in the African-American community with the Biden Administration’s early failures at improving the economy.
Black Republican Trump supporter Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, reportedly under consideration to become Trump’s vice presidential running mate, recently told The Independent that Black men are drawn to the Republican candidate because “Black men are starting to think through their politics and not just party. His, heart at his core, Trump’s a hustler, man. So it’s hustling and working hard and grinding and trying to just make money and build empires and build that stuff. You know, I don’t think it’s a Black male thing. I think men in general like that and follow that.”
Democrats dismiss the idolatry by Donalds, Sen. Tim Scott, Ben Carson and other Black Republican males of Donald Trump, noting that in the Democratic Party, the most loyal base of supporters are led consistently by African-American women.
Thus, it’s no accident that the first black woman to ever be elected vice President of the United States is the ever visible tip of the re-election spear when it comes to the Biden-Harris campaign.
Flushed with money now, the campaign is also reportedly making big Black media buys, and engaging prominent Black Democratic elected officials to get on the campaign bandwagon early.
In March, the Biden-Harris campaign launched two television ads in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which will run through April 21st.
With Biden speaking directly to Black voters, one of the ads states:
“As bad as Trump was, his economy was worse, and Black America felt it the most,” Biden said. “He cut health insurance while giving tax breaks to the wealthy and big business. He stoked racial violence, attacked voting rights, and, if reelected, vowed to be a dictator and, quote, get revenge. We can’t go back.”
Supporters of Pres. Biden also note that the Black unemployment rate is now the lowest it’s ever been, certainly lower than it was under Pres. Trump.
With the presidential election now officially seven months away, political observers say expect more from both campaigns targeting the African-American community.
For Donald Trump, his mission is to lure as much Black support away from the Democratic fold as possible in order to win North Carolina. He’s also counting on whatever drawing power Black conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson may have with rural conservative Black voters to help get the job done.
For Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, their mission is to hold onto whatever Black voter support they have in North Carolina, and build on it if possible, in order to put the Tar Heel State, and it’s vital 15 Electoral College votes, in the winner’s column on November 5th.
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BLACK REDISTRICTING LAWSUIT
FAILS IN FEDERAL APPEALS COURT
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
A lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Republican-led NC General Assembly’s latest state Senate voting redistricting map was shot down by a federal three-judge appellate panel of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The suit, brought by two African-American plaintiffs, sought to block the voting map from being further used in the 2024 elections, claiming that it diluted black voting strength in the state’s historic northeastern “Black Belt,” across two Senate districts, thus violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act by not allowing Black voters there to elect their own state senatorial candidates.
The March 28th 97-page opinion issued by the court however, only denied a preliminary injunction against the Senate redistricting map.The merits of the plaintiffs’ claims can still be heard at federal district court trial.
“The denial of preliminary relief is just that: preliminary,” wrote the Republican appellate court panel majority. “It may be that with discovery and further factual development, plaintiffs can prove that these two Senate districts violate Section 2 of the (Voting Rights Act) and they are entitled to a majority-minority district in northeastern North Carolina.”
But if the two Black plaintiffs intend to take the case to trial, they’ll have to hurry to get it heard before the upcoming November 5h general elections. That may not make a difference, however. The case is being sent back to federal District Court Judge James C. Dever, the original Republican judge who slammed the lawsuit when he dismissed it earlier this year.
“Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act requires an extraordinary, mandatory preliminary injunction compelling the race-based sorting of voters for the 2024 Senate elections in North Carolina,” Dever wrote in his earlier opinion.. “On the current record, plaintiffs are not likely to succeed on the merits of their Section 2 claim and are not likely to suffer irreparable harm…”
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