FERGUSON, Mo. — The NAACP is scrambling to ensure black voters turn out for next Tuesday’s election, amid signs there’s a lack of enthusiasm for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.
“I’m concerned about it. That’s why I’m working extra hard now,” Adolphus Pruitt, president of St. Louis City’s NAACP chapter, told the Washington Examiner of his get-out-the-vote effort.
McCaskill needs to build enthusiasm in Missouri’s biggest cities, Kansas City and St. Louis, as she and her Republican opponent, Josh Hawley, battle over votes in the state’s more rural counties. But Pruitt said he doesn’t see “a lot of energy” ahead of the Nov. 6 contest, at least in his community.
Pruitt blamed the overall lack of energy seen in a nonpresidential election year, but even Republicans are touting McCaskill’s lack of support among black voters. Republican National Committee Rapid Response Director Michael Ahrens claimed this week in an email to reporters that Democrats were “stumbling” without former President Barack Obama at the top of the ballot and a Democratic National Committee “that’s been widely assailed for its lack of minority outreach.”
The political attack also comes as McCaskill was caught this week in an ugly back-and-forth with black state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal. Chappelle-Nadal accused McCaskill on Twitter of being “a piece of shit” and compared her to a being a slave owner after the senator distanced herself from so-called “crazy Democrats” like Chappelle-Nadal on Fox News. Chappelle-Nadal last year was investigated by the Secret Service for writing on Facebook that she hoped Trump was assassinated.
The antidote to the toxic rhetoric has been focusing on issues rather than candidates or parties, according to Pruitt. His NAACP chapter paired up with the Missionary Baptist State Convention of Missouri for the first time this year to talk to people about issues that affect their lives, including criminal justice reform, the economy and jobs, and healthcare. They then register them to vote and encourage them to walk into a polling station.
The National Coalition of 100 Black Women’s Metropolitan St. Louis chapter is also using an awareness-based strategy, President Lakiea Sidney told the Washington Examiner.
“We, as African-Americans, are often the margin of victory,” Sidney said. “National candidates should spend time with voters and get into the issues with them, not just come around at election time with negative ads.”
Sidney is more hopeful of seeing “unprecedented” turnout next Tuesday in St. Louis County, basing that prediction on an increase in the number of voters her organization has registered.
St. Louis County also captures Ferguson, Mo., a city that received national and international attention for a period of violence sparked by the fatal shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by a white police officer in 2014.
As part of Democratic engagement efforts, the state party this cycle opened its first campaign field office in the city “since at least 2011,” according to a party official. Having a presence for McCaskill in the community appears to be working to her advantage.
“I grew up on the north side [of St. Louis City], and that’s mostly the disenfranchised,” resident Michael Boyd told the Washington Examiner. “But everyone that I talk to over there on the north side loves Claire McCaskill.”
Another local, Oscar Wilbert, offered a more tepid endorsement of the senator.
“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, but we need a Democrat in there to counteract Donald Trump,” he said.
Hawley has a two-point lead on McCaskill as of Thursday with less than a week until Election Day, according to RealClearPolitics’ poll aggregator.
