On MSNBC, Morgan State professor Jason Johnson and Sean Jackson of the Florida Black Republican Caucus discuss Donald Trump’s outreach to African-American voters.
black Republicans
The Root: Last Man Standing: Meet Telly Lovelace, the New Head of African-American Outreach for the Republican Party
Telly Lovelace is not stepping into an easy job. Not that it’s ever been easy to work on African-American outreach for the Republican National Committee, but things haven’t been this bad for the Republican Party since Kanye West called out George W. Bush. Likely GOP nominee Donald Trump is an anathema to African-American voters, the entire black outreach staff quit over the last six months, and the Republican National Committee has cut its outreach offices from 12 to seven since 2015. Taking over black outreach in 2016 for the Republican Party is like being tapped as the interim coach on a losing team: You’re set up to fail. However, none of this deters Telly Lovelace as the new head of African-American outreach for the RNC. He’s got a plan, goals and passion for the GOP. The question is does he have enough time to make it all work?
Telly Lovelace is the epitome of the Generation X black Republican. His first campaign was 1990, when, at the age of 14, he was knocking on doors and handing out campaign literature for Maurice Turner’s mayoral campaign. One of the few African Americans to ever be chief of police in Washington, D.C., Turner ran as a law-and-order Republican in the wake of Marion Barry’s drug conviction.
“Even when I was in high school, black people didn’t really understand being a Republican,” Lovelace says. “My teacher told me, ‘Really, Telly, baby, are you sure?,’ when I handed my voter registration form to my teacher and I had marked Republican.”
Lovelace went on to the University of Maryland, and after he graduated, worked for corporations like eBay and on various Republican campaigns. He was most recently at IR+Media when he got the call from RNC Chair Reince Priebus.
“This is a crisis,” Lovelace admits.
Kristal Quarker Hartsfield, former head of African-American outreach, had just left the job in mid-March, leaving the Republican Party with zero black people to manage outreach in an election year. She’d been preceded by the three other members of GOP African-American outreach and the party was facing a PR nightmare in addition to a structural one. That made Lovelace a top choice. While he certainly has his critics, Lovelace is known around Washington, D.C., as a “fixer.” GOP insiders believe that desperate party Chair Priebus knew that Lovelace could get in, hold down the fort and get out after the November elections.
“My goal here in coming into this position is to build off of the work that they [previous RNC African-American staff] accomplished. I thrive off of campaigns,” Lovelace says when asked if taking over the work of four staffers was a no-win situation. “If we can get more African Americans to listen to the Republican Party on platform and issues; Maybe [black voters will realize] the Republican Party isn’t as bad as the media and other folks say they are.”
In recent years, the majority of African-American voters haven’t simply rejected Republican presidential candidates out of party loyalty to Democrats, there are a few hot-button issues driving them away that as new head of Republican African-American outreach, Lovelace would be responsible for addressing. One such issue is the spread of voter-ID laws, especially since the Supreme Court stripped Section 5 from the Voting Rights Act. Lovelace is refreshingly honest about these laws and how to address them.
He cites Shamed Dogan, a black Republican in the Missouri state Legislature, who has proposed free state IDs, as an example of how African-American concerns about voter ID can be addressed, while still pushing the issue.
Lovelace’s goals are pretty extensive. He wants to increase the African-American vote for the Republican presidential nominee to George W. Bush level numbers (9-11 percent) instead of the recent John McCain and Mitt Romney numbers (4-5 percent). He plans to work with local African-American candidates, and he wants to expand the Republican Leadership Initiative to move more African Americans up within the national party to positions like communications director and polling. He wants to create a comprehensive list of all African-American Republican elected officials across the United States, something that, shockingly, has never been done before. All of this sounds pretty ambitious for a guy who admits that he’s only working for the Republican Party for 214 days, and has every intention of leaving right after the November election to continue his work at the IR+Media PR firm.
“I feel like I’ve got the weight of my people on my back. I can’t do all this by myself,” says Lovelace. “I want them [the GOP] to be more competitive because that will make the Democrats get on their A-game—which helps African Americans. Democrats take African Americans for granted and the GOP has ignored us.”
If Telly Lovelace’s goal is to make the Republican Party a viable competitive option for African-American voters this fall, he certainly has the skills, experience and passion to make that happen. One can only hope, for the sake of black voters and a healthy democracy in general, that after several months of losing staff and cutting costs, the RNC will actually give him the kind of structural and financial backing necessary to make his goals a reality.
This article originally appeared online at The Root.
USA Today: Jason Johnson on Republican Outreach to African-American voters
Hiram College professor Dr. Jason Johnson was quoted in USA Today about Republican outreach to the African-American community in the article “GOP sets small goals for black voter outreach.”
Jason Johnson, a political scientist at Hiram College in Ohio, doesn’t doubt the party leadership’s commitment to reaching black voters but says they have yet to bring along everyone else. “You still have a lot of state leaders who would rather hold on to pulling off 46-45% of the white vote and suppressing the black vote, than trying to get 15% of the African-American vote,” he says.
WCPN: Jason Johnson on GOP Outreach to African-Americans
Hiram College Professor Jason Johnson joined a roundtable discussion on GOP outreach to minorities for The Sound of Ideas on Ohio Public Radio.
Republicans say Democrat-leaning minorities ought to give the GOP a second look and they’re devising national strategies to make that happen. Republicans say Democrats have failed to improve the lot of low-income minorities and preside over failing urban schools by opposing school choice. What are the chances those arguments will resonate with the black and Hispanic communities in Ohio and beyond? Join Mike McIntyre for discussion Monday at 9:00 on The Sound of Ideas.
The Source: To Be Young, Black, Republican … And Ignored
When I set out to write about the newly started College Republican Chapter at Morehouse College I had images of furious conservatives in my mind. Wild eyed undergraduates with a bible in one hand and Ayn Rand in the other running around campus like Dap at the end of School Daze screaming “Wake Up” from the Democratic plantation. The GOP is making a big pitch for young voters and Black voters since getting their butts handed to them in 2012 and re-launching College Republicans at Morehouse is part of that effort. But I didn’t meet a group of holy rollers ready to bring the GOP gospel to the liberals, or even new age libertarians ready to go off grid and vote Ron Paul. What I saw was untapped potential, a revolution that not only wasn’t being televised, it wasn’t being broadcast, taped, dubbed or even recorded. The next generation of Black Republicans have all the right tools to make a difference, too bad they’re pretty much left in the shed.
Fear of a Black Voting Planet
The numbers are pretty bad; the Republican nominee for president has gotten over 10% of the black vote in a general election once since 1996. Black voters have been running from the Republican Party like a reverse stampede of elephants before Obama ran in 2008 but it’s only gotten worse since. Further the national Republican Party is still pretty conflicted on black voters. On the one side you have party Chair Reince Priebus who has made a push in both money and words to put a blacker face on the GOP because he knows 2016 is a Hillary coronation if 60+% of black voters keep turning out and 96% vote Democrat. On the other side is the REST of the GOP outside of Washington which has made it a point to pass voter ID laws and voting restrictions in every swing state for the express purpose of suppressing the youth and black vote. And Morehouse College is somewhere in between these two warring camps.
I was escorted to the weekly campus meeting by club president Michael, a cardigan wearing, wire rim glasses sporting third year chemistry major at Morehouse. When I told him I wanted to interview this next generation of black Republicans he was excited, and genuinely felt the group reflected a diversity of GOP opinions not often seen by the mainstream press. I was cautiously optimistic.
Out of the Mouths of Baby Republicans
“You’ve been on welfare all these years why don’t you try to get off it and they’re like well the governments gonna pay for it and Obama’s gonna give me all this free money. And why should I work? And to me that’s not right.”
Right off the bat Donny, freshman from northern Georgia said he became a Republican because of the lazy welfare cheats he knew back home. In fact, most of the 7 students I met with and interviewed said they came to the GOP because they were free market conservatives and felt the Grand Ole’ Party was the way to go. Although they admitted there are some problems with that in the black community as a whole.
“There’s a perception that the Republican party is uhm, for White rich people. Especially among African Americans. ” Said Jovan Pierre, shy student up front who also talked about his pro-life stance being crucial to his voting politics. Of course all of the free market talk was fine, but really I felt like they were beating around the bush, so I got direct in my questioning.
“Why do you think most black folks don’t vote Republican? Is it a policy thing or a perception thing?” I asked.
The chapter President Michael spoke out immediately:
“When Mitt Romney was running against president Obama recently I heard people around campus saying I’m not voting for Mitt Romney because I wanna keep financial aid.”
When I pointed out that the Obama administration has actually gutted HBCU’s across the nation by arbitrarily ending the Plus-One Loan program, the lifeblood of many African American college students, the irony wasn’t lost on the group. But it really didn’t matter, no one believed Mitt Romney was offering a better deal, African American voters just don’t trust most Republican policies. When I asked how the party can change that the answers were pretty straight forward.
“You have to SHOW a program that works” said Michael, a business student from Cincinnati, sitting in the back of the room “They [The GOP] can’t just say something works they have to show it to people, that’s the only way they’re going to get black votes.”
Once we got to the subject of perception the room got more animated and I broached the main reason that any African American Republican on an HBCU campus knows that Blacks don’t vote for the GOP.
“Let’s just talk about the elephant in the room” I said. “You all know that most black folks don’t vote Republican because they think they’re racist. They see things like voter ID and other policies by the Republicans that do not appear to be helpful to the black community. If you could talk to [RNC Chair] Reince Priebus what would you tell him?”
They all kind of laughed a knowing laugh then paused for a moment. When the hands started going up to speak the Morehouse GOP spoke with one voice with same advice for the Republican National Committee: Social Issues.
“[On Social issues] If they keep, if they keep their y’know, dogmatic and I’m not changing I’m not budging attitude they’re going to keep losing elections. And they haven’t found that point where they can balance and not be so stubborn on social issues.” Said one freshman marketing major.
More than race, or abortion the students kept going back to things like gay marriage, saying that the Republicans were losing young voters [ like themselves] with their stances on those issues. Further, one student blurted out “And Stop bashing Obama”. While everyone in the room considered themselves a Republican or Libertarian, every single person in that room thought highly of President Barack Obama the man, if not the politician.
“I respect the man, he’s done historic things” says political director Mark, dressed in a dapper suit and tie in the middle of the room,
“But Policy is fair game”.
The Right Messengers
The sexy story would be to say that this was a group of fire breathing nut jobs, perfect fodder for liberal commentators and anti-Republican pundits to screech at but that’s not what I found at Morehouse. What I found is the voice of Black Republicanism that is never seen on the airwaves. They weren’t grinning golliwogs apologizing for racism and performing for White conservatives, or whiny African American conservatives claiming to be ostracized by the liberal black establishment for daring to leave the Democratic “plantation”. They weren’t even the funny nerdy Republicans from Key & Peele. These were normal college kids with opinions. In other words, the polar opposite of what the Republican Party puts on television cable networks every week to supposedly recruit new black voters.
Were they always right about Republican policies? Of course not. Were they a little naïve about the relationship between the party and Black voters? Occasionally. But they were also bright engaging normal students who could be critical of the GOP and Obama while not spewing race laden talking points and rhetoric. The Republican party is nevergoing to be the top choice for Black America, but they could be on the menu. If the national party spent more time tapping into places like Morehouse, and engaging these students as more than window dressing for diversity brochures, and less time on shock jock political provocateurs looking for 15 minute of fame on CNN, Fox and MSNBC; maybe the Republican nominee in 2016 can snag more than 8% of the black vote. But as long as it’s easier for the GOP to hire political hucksters who would rather tap dance at Tea Party rallies than do voter registration in the South Side of Chicago the Morehouse College Republicans will remain an anomaly. It’s too bad because they really have a message worth hearing.
This article originally appeared online at TheSource.com.
