Conservative activists in Milwaukee’s black and Hispanic communities say outreach by President Trump and his reelection campaign is forcing Democratic nominee Joe Biden to “actually compete” for minority voters in the traditionally liberal stronghold.
“Trump understands that the first rule of outreach is showing up,” said Christopher Lawrence, first vice chair of the Milwaukee County Republican Party.
Lawrence, who is black, said that while Trump made some efforts in 2016 to court voters in his community, “Now, he’s setting up an infrastructure where he’s hiring staff, we are funding offices, we’re programming, we’re doing events, or canvassing.”
“We’re actually making the Democrats compete for the vote,” he said. “That’s the biggest thing.”
Though Biden leads Trump in most polls, the race is expected to be close.
In Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump by 6 points, on average, 50% to 44%.
Trump’s courting of minority voters in Milwaukee is part of a larger battleground strategy to turn out voters who did not cast a ballot for Trump in the last presidential election and drum up new support among minorities.
Turnout among black voters in Wisconsin dropped 19 percentage points in 2016 compared to 2012, when Barack Obama was on the ballot, to 59% from 74%.
“There are a few converts who came over who voted for Hillary in 2016 but not a lot,” said Lawrence. “But there are a lot of people [saying], ‘I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016. But I’m voting for him for sure this year.’”
Black eligible voters make up 6% of the state’s electorate and 4% of registered voters, the state’s largest nonwhite voting bloc, data compiled by the Pew Research Center and Marquette University shows. Many of these voters are concentrated in Milwaukee.
Rates of poverty and incarceration for African Americans in Wisconsin are among the highest in the country, while black homeownership is among the lowest.
“There’s no state that has locked up more black males per capita than the city of Milwaukee. You can come at the angle from many viewpoints, but there is a problem of over-criminalization in our state, especially among black males,” said Lawrence. “Incarceration, mass incarceration, people know what that is here.”
Trump’s outreach to black voters touts his funding of historically black colleges and universities, new tax incentives for investing in low-income communities, and a package of criminal justice reforms intended to reduce recidivism and decrease the federal prison population, which had spiked following the passage of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.
“Trump has done a good job at defining Joe Biden as that guy who was behind the 1994 crime bill,” Lawrence added.
Data pooled from Marquette University Law School polls between May and October shows Biden leading Trump among black likely voters, 81% to 10%, with 9% either undecided or declining to answer.
In 2016, exit polls in Wisconsin had Trump at 6% among black voters, said Charles Franklin, director of the poll.
Sharon Gray, a staunch black Trump supporter from Milwaukee who, in 2008, voted for Obama, said some black voters are paying Trump new attention.
“Black Americans are having a secret conversation,” Gray said, citing Trump’s actions on school choice, as well as federal sentencing reform and conservative values around such issues as abortion, which many African Americans share.
“It is important that if I live in Milwaukee and there’s a great school in Wauwatosa, that my child can still go to it,” Gray said. “That matters. We’ve been so trained to care about the person and the personality and the color that we forgot about why we vote — and we vote for policy; we vote for change.”
A report by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee points to metro Milwaukee’s low educational attainment and high poverty as contributing to the city’s racial disparities.
Said Cynthia Garner, an African American resident of Milwaukee: “It doesn’t matter what ZIP code you live in, if school choice is made available to you, you can go to a better school.”
Biden leads Trump with Wisconsin’s Hispanic voters, 57% to 26%, according to the Marquette Law School tracking poll.
As with black Wisconsin voters, some of the state’s Hispanic population, which makes up 4% of the electorate and 3% of registered voters, is drawn to Trump’s conservative message.
Latino pastor Marty Calderon, who opened up a prayer for Trump’s rally in Waukesha last week, told the Washington Examiner that he asks his congregants to consider the “morals of their beliefs, their religious beliefs” when choosing who to vote for.
Calderon said that he knows more Latinos who are supporting Trump this year than in 2016, but there’s still reticence. He said that some people “are intimidated to say this, afraid that their businesses might be affected.”
“I don’t ever push my agenda on anybody, but if somebody asked me, I definitely don’t deny it,” said Veronica Diaz, a Latina Trump supporter who lives on the south side of Milwaukee.
