PHILADELPHIA — Less than a week after President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris kicked off a “Biden-Harris Black Voters” campaign in the city, two Republican lawmakers visited battleground state Pennsylvania to appeal to African-American voters. The GOP message contained an optimism that’s been starkly lacking from an administration that has been steadily losing support from that key demographic.
“It’s not 1964. It’s 2024,” Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt told a crowd at The Cigar Code, a cigar bar in Philadelphia’s fashionable Northern Liberties neighborhood, on Tuesday night. “You know when the best time is to be a black person in America? Right now, it’s tomorrow!”
It’s a stark contrast to the Democratic message. In an angry speech at Morehouse College’s commencement last month, Biden questioned “what it means to be a black man who loves his country, even if that country doesn’t give him the same love in return.”
Hunt and Rep. Byron Donald of Florida, who is leading a national effort to attract African-American voters to the Republican Party, interacted with the mostly black audience and received positive feedback.
The lawmakers then attended a panel discussion moderated by Michelle Tafoya, a former “Sunday Night Football” reporter and current activist.
The meeting, billed as a “fireside chat,” covered a variety of issues, including community and family structure, criminal justice reform and the economy.
“For us, talking about opportunities [are] “Anything that comes out of the Republican platform, we have no problem talking about it,” Donald told the crowd, saying many Republican candidates make the mistake of not campaigning in majority-black areas. “Before we have a platform, [from being in Congress]We were having those conversations privately and now it’s just coming out in public.”
Last Wednesday in the City of Brotherly Love, Biden claimed his opponent was a racist because former President Donald Trump “doesn’t say Black Lives Matter,” saying he was “the same guy who tried to tear gas you as you peacefully protested the murder of George Floyd.”
Hunt and Donald fired back, criticizing Biden for his role in writing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, commonly known as the Crime Bill, which exacerbated the mass incarceration of Black Americans.
“He’s the guy who passed a bill in 1994 that jailed black people for the exact same crimes as white people, and he made the distinction between cocaine and crack,” Hunt said. “Let’s talk about racism here.”
The lawmakers also spoke about the importance of strong family structures in the black community, noting that the rate of black single-parent families has risen sharply since the civil rights era.
Hunt, who was born into a two-parent home, credits them with instilling strong values in him, while Donald, whose parents are divorced, says his upbringing gave him the conviction to devote himself to his son.
Donald said a “reinvigoration” of the black family, instead of reliance on government, could sway more black voters to conservative causes.
Akbar Muslim, who attended the event, said he was especially looking forward to hearing from Florida Rep. Donald, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, as he is a strong supporter of the former president.
“I see Trump as the man who can get us back on track to a constitutional republic,” said the Muslim, who was wearing a “Keep America Great” hat and smoking a cigar on a brown leather couch.
On the other side of the aisle, Philadelphia resident Joanna Day, who described herself as likely to vote for Biden, said women’s health issues are what she’s most concerned about in this election.
Still, Day came out on Tuesday and said he was “interested” to hear what Hunt and Donald have to say.
Trump won just under 19% of the vote among black men in 2020, but some polls have his approval rating above 20% as issues such as inflation and urban insecurity caused by illegal immigration continue to plague Biden.
Hunt said black conservatives like himself can capitalize on this shift by sharing their message within their communities, which he believes could lead to major gains for Trump in November’s election.
Hunt’s staff is planning similar events for black voters in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit and possibly Charlotte – all battleground cities with large black populations – ahead of this fall’s elections.
“The low is 25 percent of black men, the high is 33 percent, a third,” Hunt told The Post, pointing to rising poll numbers.
