TO EDITORS/PUBLISHERS - CNN is reporting that Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has been chosen as Harris's VP running mate. I have inserted his name in the first line of the first paragraph, plus, I have made additions to the second story.
Thanks.
Cash
BLACKS DISMISS CONTROVERSY
ABOUT VP HARRIS’ “RACE”
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
As Vice President Kamala Harris now has her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, in her historic run for the presidency, and has earned the necessary number of delegates required to secure the 2024 Democratic nomination for president at the convention in two weeks, controversy still swirls around the Trump campaign’s attempts to ethnically label her in the minds of voters.
Does VP Harris, who had to postpone a scheduled visit to North Carolina today as part of a major campaign swing through projected battleground states, primarily identify as Black or Indian-American? Her Republican opponent for the presidency, former Pres. Donald Trump, insists that she “only recently’ declared herself to be Black, which is not true.
Black conservatives like Candace Owens, however, joined in the rhetorical fray.
“That’s objectively funny and it’s the same question that we’re all asking ourselves, which is like, who is this girl mimicking?,” Owens sarcastically said on her Youtube Channel. “Now she’s like Kamala from the block—nobody recognizes this Kamala.”
While some elected Republicans, like House Speaker Mike Johnson and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) have said VP Harris should be scrutinized for her record, and not her race, other elected Republicans have dismissively called her a “DEI hire.”
"Black" rapper/model Amber Rose, who is of mixed race heritage herself, and stirred her own controversy speaking as a Trump supporter at the recent Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, told the Adin Ross livestream program last Saturday that she felt VP Harris was "pandering to Black people."
"I think that [Harris] thinks that that's what Black people wanna see in order vote for her," Rose said.
Others, like Black Republican Florida Congressman Byron Donalds, insist that Harris identifies as “Indian-American” first.
“If we’re going to be accurate, when Kamala Harris went into the United States Senate, it was [the Associated Press] that said she was the first Indian American United States senator,” Donalds told ABC’s “This Week” last Sunday. “It was actually played up a lot when she came into the Senate. Now she’s running nationally, obviously, the campaign has shifted. They’re talking much more about her father’s heritage and her Black identity.”
The Harris campaign has blasted Trump and his surrogates for their attempts to cause racial confusion.
“The hostility Donald Trump showed …is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people,” a campaign spokesperson said.
Here in North Carolina, African-American Harris supporters are also outraged.
“How in the hell can a few uninformed and ill-focused Blacks allow a race-challenged and insensitive Donald Trump to distract them into debating whether Kamala Harris is Black? By every indicator, she is definitely Black and one of us,” opined NCCU Law Prof. Irving Joyner, speaking for many Black Democratic supporters.
“It is true that she is mixed-race, but many African Americans fit that category,” Joyner continued. “Legally, in most States, a person is deemed to be Black if there is a mere one drop of Black blood within their body. Kamala is at least 50% as was Barack Obama…and literally millions other Black people in this country and around the world.”
North Carolina native, the Rev. Benjamin Chavis, told NC Black Voters for Harris online last week, “We have so much to vote for, not just to vote against, but to vote for. I particularly want our young people, our millennials and generation Z to get inspired and not be dissuaded by all the falsehoods and distractions and misinformation on social media.”
Kinston City Councilman Chris Suggs, currently the youngest elected official in North Carolina, and a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, told NC Black Voters for Harris, “Vice President Harris is the real deal y’all…She’s not working to build walls and divisions like those other folks. From what we witnessed, she has united our party like never before.”
According to a recent report in the NY Times, “A poll of likely Black voters in seven battleground states (including North Carolina), conducted in mid-July by the left-leaning group Data for Progress, found that a minority agreed with the notion that Democrats cannot pass over the first Black female vice president. A majority preferred the more pragmatic option: picking the person with the best chance to beat Mr. Trump.”
“While Kamala Harris is a very popular pick, justifying her selection through an appeal to identity would probably be unnecessary, unconvincing and counterproductive with Black voters,” said an analysis of the poll by Split Ticket, an election modeling and data analysis group,” The Times report added.
The controversy still reverberates from last week’s raucous appearance by Donald Trump at the Chicago convention of the National Association of Black Journalists. During onstage, live-streamed roundtable questioning by three Black female reporters, Trump said of Harris, "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now, she wants to be known as Black. So, I don't know, is she Indian or is she Black?"
When ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott, instantly fact-checked Trump’s answer on-stage, reminding him that VP Harris, born in Oakland, California, is the daughter of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, but has always identified as being a Black woman, and graduated from an HBCU (Howard University), Trump replied, "I respect either one. But she obviously doesn't because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn, and she went -- she became a Black person."
Black leaders across the national spectrum, like NAACP Pres./CEO Derrick Johnson, have blasted Trump for his remarks, and attempt to negatively inject ice into a close presidential race.
"To walk into a room full of Black journalists and attack someone’s ‘Blackness’ is another level of disrespect,” Johnson wrote. “To anyone who needs a reminder: we can’t change the color of our skin, and we don’t want to.”
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GOV. COOPER REFERS TO
OBAMA-LIKE VICTORY FOR VP
HARRIS: “I GOT THAT 2008 FEEL”
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
No, he won’t be the next vice president of the United States, having taken himself out of the running weeks ago. But that doesn’t mean Gov. Roy Cooper isn’t bullish on Democratic Party presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ chances to make history as the first woman of color to be elected commander-in-chief.
“I got that 2008 feel,” Cooper told MSNBC’s “The Weekend” Saturday. “We won North Carolina for Barack Obama; I have that same feeling now. We’re gonna really get to work here.”
2008, of course, was the last time North Carolina elected a Democrat to the White House, namely Barack Obama, something that only happened once before when Jimmy Carter won in 1976. Obama was the first African-American ever elected president in history, though when he ran for reelection and won in 2012, he lost North Carolina by a slim margin to Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah.
Still, the tremendous energy and Democratic Party unity in Obama’s 2008 campaign is something many political observers now say seems evident in the comparatively short time that VP Harris has been campaigning, ever since Pres. Joe Biden announced just two weeks ago that he would not run for reelection.
Gov. Cooper told MSNBC that North Carolina’s voting population has changed to become even more Democratic than in 2008.
“We have people moving into North Carolina from the technology sector, from the life sciences sector, from the aerospace sector,” Cooper said. “The data shows that we can flip North Carolina for the Democrats. And we’re really excited about that opportunity. And it’s pretty clear that the Harris campaign believes that, too, because of all of the swing states where she’s going…”
In several national polls, VP Harris has either drawn equal to, or slightly behind Donald Trump, all within the statistical margin of error of plus or minus 3 points. By most calculations, at this point, the race for president is seen as a “toss-up.”
But nationally, the Harris campaign has apparently energized Black voters.
A CBS News poll, conducted between July 30th and August 1st, shows 74% of Black registered voters say they will definitely vote for in the November election, compared to just 58% that said they would vote before Pres. Biden dropped out.
The poll had a margin of error of plus/minus 2.7 percent.
In North Carolina, where Biden lost to Trump in 2020 by less that 75,000 votes, a Morning Consult/Bloomberg poll conducted from July 24 through July 28 showed that 65% of black voters said they were more likely to vote now that Biden is no longer the Democratic nominee. Seventy-one percent of Black North Carolina voters said they’d likely vote for Harris.
Recent national polls show that Trump still maintains a slight lead over Harris. But that could change with the election just over 90 days away.
As in sixteen years ago, young people are seen as being critical to a Harris victory in North Carolina and other battleground states.
“In this election, we know young voters will be key, and we know your vote cannot be taken for granted,” Harris told members of the Voters of Tomorrow Summit in a virtual message last week. “It must be earned, and that is exactly what we will do.”
The virtual event joined Gen Z organizers and activists from chapters across twenty states and volunteers even further.
“Youth voters are fired up this election, “ said Joey Hannum, spokesperson for the North Carolina Democratic Coordinated Campaign, in a statement. “We’re continuing to build on our statewide campus-organizing program and extensive youth engagement efforts to get the word out about how Vice President Kamala Harris is delivering for North Carolina and young people.”
According to published reports, since Pres. Biden dropped out of the race, and VP Harris entered, voter registration across the country has skyrocketed, and fundraising, mostly in small donations, has surpassed the $300 million mark.
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