When Vice President Kamala Harris and Barack Obama shared a stage for the first time at an Atlanta rally last week during her abridged campaign, the former president, who is still the top draw among Democrats, detailed the candidate’s policies and character. At one point, he even called out the voting block that had recently sent the vice president’s campaign to do something no Democrat had done before: Speak to Black male voters.
“I’ve noticed this — especially with some men — who seem to think [Donald] Trump’s behavior is a sign of strength, that macho, ‘I’m going to own these folks, I’m going to put them down.’ I am here to tell you, that is not what real strength is. It never has been,” Obama told the area crowd, essentially calling out the “some men,” who are Black men, as naive to fall for Trump’s gambit.
This was the concern of the Harris campaign as it entered the final fortnight of the 2024 race and received some unexpected but undeniable news in the polling.
The week prior, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Harris had the support of 73.8 percent of Georgia’s Black voters, compared to 7.6 percent for Trump — a very healthy lead for the veep. But any drift toward the GOP is a major concern in a campaign that is getting tighter by the week.
In 2020, 88 percent of Georgia’s Black voters supported President Joe Biden. Then, came the New York Times/Siena College poll that showed Harris’ loss of support among Black men to be her largest compared to Biden. The poll showed that 70 percent of Black men plan to vote for Harris while 83 percent of Black women said they will cast their votes for the vice president on or before Nov. 5.
It can’t be stated strongly enough how close the race between Harris and the former president appears to be when looking at polling. A recent NBC News poll shows the Democrat and Republican candidates in a dead heat, tied 48-48 among potential voters based on the network’s polling.
The Harris campaign is in a precarious position now, with anything that siphoned off votes from her final tally now a major problem. As the Democrat’s candidate, she has the treacherous task of maintaining the coalition of Black and Latino voters that the party built over decades but is now starting to come apart at its seams. It’s been damaged as Trump and the Republicans make headway among the working class, and Harris is left to rely on the party’s new backup voting block — the college-educated middle class, which by all accounts is shrinking.
With just a few weeks left in her three-month campaign run, Harris and her team have proven themselves unwilling to allow the hard-won votes of Black men that the party fought for over the past few decades to simply drift toward the GOP. The team had a plan, and it was time to shove it into the spotlight. The good news was that what they’d drawn up was about to make history, as it was the first action plan created by a campaign that singled out the needs of Black men.
Since she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris has pitched the idea of an “opportunity economy” as part of her platform. From the stage in Chicago, she explained how a Harris administration will “bring together labor and workers and small-business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies to create jobs.” This model focuses on bringing affordable childcare and housing while decreasing health care and energy costs, investing in small businesses and creating tax breaks for the middle class.
On Oct. 14, the Harris campaign’s Opportunity Economy for Black Men was released. For the first time in U.S. history, as actor Michael Ealy told The Hollywood Reporter by phone after he concluded a multi-city tour to engage Black men, they “felt like they were being seen. They felt like somebody was speaking to them for the first time in politics, plain and simple.”
Ealy is one of dozens of Black celebrities, captains of industry and household names tapped by Team Harris for outreach to the Black community over the past weeks. They have fanned out across battleground states, led the campaign’s ubiquitous Zoom meetings, canvased, attended events and walked into barbershops and Black-owned businesses to meet with Black male voters, advocate for Harris and gain votes for her on Tuesday. Their work may ultimately spackle some of the cracks Trump has made in the Democrat’s coalition of minority voting blocks.
Whether the polls were correct and the drift of Black men to Trump is real, a blip that won’t be seen on Election Day or an exaggerated media narrative is a question that may be best answered by these men, who have been in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other battleground states. Asked about what they saw and heard in conversations with Black men and if that drift was palpable, each of the Black leaders and celebrities THR spoke with answered with a resounding “no.”
“Listen, it’s going to be a razor-tight election. Every single vote will matter. But by and large, make no mistake, African Americans are still very heavily for VP Kamala, for the Democratic agenda, for Democrats, for progressive candidates, etc.,” Producer Will Packer told THR by phone. “Being out there talking to people, I don’t see that. Sure, there are always challenges, but I’m probably even more surprised at the number of rural whites that have said, ‘Listen, I don’t like Trump. I voted for him before, I’m not voting for him again.’ That’s happening as well. So it could go either way, but the Black men leaving Kamala Harris in droves, I don’t see that it’s a challenge.”
A man picks out Harris-Walz campaign posters at a campaign event in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, on October 13, 2024.
Photo by Nathan Morris/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Packer — whose box office hits via his Will Packer Productions and Will Packer Media include Think Like a Man, Ride Along, and Girls Trip — said that it was after he met Harris at a small dinner party at her home that he decided to take on the task of lending his name and major success story to the campaign’s outreach to the Black male demo. He said that many of the men he’s spoken with are seeing the campaign’s Opportunity Agenda for Black Men as an opportunity they didn’t know they were waiting for.
“One of the interesting things that I heard recently at a town hall I participated in in Atlanta was someone said, ‘You know, to me, it’s not about her being a Black woman and me supporting her not because I should but because of what she represents. I didn’t realize that her policy and her agenda would be potentially so beneficial to me from an economic standpoint and that the color green means far more to me than Black or white.’”
Ealy saw much of the same in terms of what may be President Joe Biden and the Democrats’ legacy with the Black communities where he went on behalf of Harris.
“When you talk to people about what the administration did regarding medical debt, and first-time homebuyers getting $25,000. When you break down policy, in some ways, the Democratic Party struggles with its messaging,” he said. “But it’s interesting, because the Republican Party has no message, and yet their messaging somehow is readily available. All that misinformation about Springfield [and unproven rumors of migrants eating local pets], it just ran. Everybody knows about that, but people don’t know about the child tax credit, people don’t know about first-time mortgage assistance. People don’t know about even student loan debt, which has been in the paper for the last eight months. People still don’t know about that. Even though they know people whose loans have been forgiven, they still aren’t putting two and two together. When on the other side, they hear everything, every single thing is getting through from the Republican side.”
Moments of learning and sharing knowledge like this reflect the goals of the Harris campaign of “meeting voters where they are to share the vice president and Gov. Tim Walz’s vision of “a new way forward” for the Black community.
“VP Harris has concrete plans for real change,” senior Harris campaign advisor Kamau Marshall said in a statement sent to THR. “She stands out as the only presidential candidate with a comprehensive policy approach for all people, and specifically for Black men, engaging with them across diverse platforms. In a remarkably short time, VP Harris has made an impact that surpasses her opponent who has been in the race for over a year. The new policies and these vital engagements aim to resonate with Black voters, encouraging their participation in this election.
Elements of the outreach campaign include sessions dubbed “Shop Talk” and “Black Men Huddle.” Marshall explains how these group discussion moments are intended to foster authentic conversations in key battleground states and create welcoming spaces for Black men to “share their thoughts on critical issues that often go unspoken.”
Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona were targeted for these engagements for Black men in major cities to rural, surrounding areas. Black Men Huddle events have taken place in Detroit, Charlotte, Atlanta and Philadelphia, the campaign said. The celebrity and business leader list reads like a who’s who of Black excellence in the U.S.: Tyler Perry, Brian Tyree Henry, Don Cheadle, Spike Lee, John Legend, Jermaine Dupri, Bakari Sellers and so on (and on…). The names that Team Harris presented to THR were not an exhaustive list, as other big names have spoken out on Zoom meet-ups and online to drum up support.
Critics, mostly from the GOP or on Fox News, say the Harris campaign relies on celebrities to propel the campaign because the electorate has no desire to pack a stadium to see her speak. Or they’ve torn into key surrogates like Obama, for what they deem pandering from the former president after leaving Martha’s Vineyard to scold Black men on their behavior.
Celebrity endorsement is practically built into the fabric of the Democrat and goes back decades. You could call it sour grapes from across the aisle as they look over at much more exciting events, and the actual impact of a celebrity endorsement is questionable but certainly negligible — though what Taylor Swift’s vast legion of Swifties is capable of mobilizing remains to be seen.
The Harris campaign recently characterized the candidate’s presence at her events as similar to the energy brought in by a celebrity walking onto a stage. It’s difficult to watch Harris surprise the crowd by appearing unannounced on the first night of this year’s DNC; that crowd went wild for the vice president. And the excitement around celebrities whenever they enter politics, while not doing much to garner votes, brings that energy and pushes turnout — nearly always an advantage for Democrats.
Kevin Liles knows something about bringing in energy. The record executive and co-founder and CEO of 300 Entertainment, who was president of Def Jam Recordings and executive vice president of The Island Def Jam Music Group for five years, told THR that he’s known Harris since her days as California’s attorney general and can integrate the requested outreach for her campaign into his jet-set work life.
“I’m in Philadelphia at a concert for iHeart and the campaign calls to see, would I attend a Black men talk happening in Philly?” he explained. “OK, what do you think we should do it? I call my people. Or I will have to be in D.C., or I have to be in Baltimore. I’m constantly out and where I can plug myself and use my leverage to be a radio, to be a TV, bring together DJs, to bring together artists. I use that leverage so I don’t know if it’s them pulling me or me pulling them, or us just working together to get it done and connect.”
The superconnected exec continued, “I’m talking to every single person I’m having every single conversation around what I feel is best for this country.”
On Tuesday, the results of the latest survey from the NAACP showed that perhaps the narrative wasn’t quite true about Black men beginning to abandon Harris. It showed that Black men who are age 50 and under have decreased their likelihood to vote for Trump; that figure sat at 21 percent among that section of Black male voters and was down from 27 percent in August. The same group of under 50s had an increased likelihood to vote for Harris — now up to 59 percent, up from 51 percent in August.
Quentin James, who founded Win With Black Men —the offshoot group of engaged voters who meet regularly on Zoom and organize around political campaigns — said that seeing the reactions that may have led to the numbers shifting in the NAACP’s survey will hopefully translate on Nov. 5 and has been “incredible” for all involved in this massive effort.
“It’s so interesting to witness Black men not knowing how to react. Because for the first time, a candidate is saying, ‘I want to do something for you through policy,” he explained of his weeks campaigning for Harris on her historic platform item. “There was a ton of chatter in this election: ‘Democrats are always this. They’re always that and never deliver.’ Now that we have this plan, I’m seeing a lot of brothers changing their hearts and minds to hope that this time might be different. And I think that is what’s been incredible to witness and to watch for our organization. It’s a love letter to Black men in the form of policy.”
