TUCSON, Ariz. — If there is a typical Kamala Harris voter, it might be Charles Johnson, a 23-year-old black college student.
Johnson is informed and politically engaged; he went to a Democratic campaign rally on the campus of the University of Arizona on Friday to listen to former President Barack Obama.
Yet he is not all that impressed with Obama, the nation’s first black president, or Harris, who would be the second. He says he is leaning toward voting for Donald Trump.
“The media says he [Trump] is horrible and racist and he’s going to bring us back, but he’s only gaining support from black voters,” Johnson said in an interview. “He’s only gaining support from black men.”
Democrats have been rattled by recent polls showing Harris’ numbers falling among black voters, particularly young black men. As he campaigns for Harris, one of Obama’s tasks is to convince black men like Johnson that voting for Trump would be a grave mistake. In the days remaining before the election, he will interview podcasters and various Internet personalities who have large black followings, an Obama aide said.
He remains a unique figure in national politics, still very popular today. Obama is the only president since Ronald Reagan to win the presidency twice with more than 50% of the vote.
An Emerson College survey this month found that a majority of voters in each of the seven key swing states that will decide the election have a positive opinion of the 44th president.
He and Harris talk regularly, with Obama acting as a “sounding board” on issues such as her choice of a running mate, his advisers said. He has offered to provide her with any help she might need with campaign strategy, fundraising and staffing, they added. After Harris replaced Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe signed on as one of her senior advisers.
Obama works largely behind the scenes and has already raised about $80 million for the Democratic ticket. At one point, he recorded 21 videos at once for Harris’ campaign, according to one of his aides, who asked to remain anonymous.
“Black male voters have tremendous respect and admiration for President Obama, and they’re going to listen intently to his message,” said Joel Benenson, a former Obama campaign pollster. “What’s implicit in his message is, ‘You need to rally around her like you’ve been rallying around me.’ That’s the message they’re going to get, and it’s going to be helpful.”
But it’s not certain that Obama’s target audience will listen.
As the son of a black father and a white mother, Obama is forever etched in America’s fraught history on race. He delivered one of the country’s most compelling speeches on race relations when he was a junior presidential candidate in 2008. Despite the barrier-breaking nature of his campaign, his advisers told him when he took office that he didn’t want to be a “teacher” leading a kind of national seminar on race in America.
He got an early taste of how dangerous it is for a sitting president to delve into the issue. Responding to the arrest of a black Harvard University professor who was locked out of his home and tried to force his way in, Obama said the police had acted “stupidly.” He later invited both the professor, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the white arresting officer to the White House for what was called a “beer summit.”
Obama is now 63, thin as ever and with close-cropped hair that has turned white. Since leaving office, he has been selective about his public appearances, campaigning when he thinks voters are informed and he can make the biggest difference.
A Harris aide said the campaign wanted Obama to time his rallies to coincide with the start of early voting in key contested states. “He’s been a tremendously helpful surrogate in that regard,” said Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokeswoman.
A younger generation of black Americans may have seen little of Obama and have only vague memories of a presidency that ended nearly eight years ago.
At a pair of rallies in Tucson and Las Vegas in recent days, Obama drew thousands of cheering supporters, though turnout among young black men appeared sparse.
When it comes to this particular segment of the electorate, Obama may not be the persuasive messenger he once was, some attendees said.
Miles Covington, 35, a black student at the University of Arizona, said he hasn’t decided how he’ll vote. He came to hear Obama speak, and as he stood in line for the event on campus, he said he didn’t see Obama as a figure who would be particularly influential with young black men.
“He resonates with a different culture,” Covington said. “They need a young guy who’s going to stand up and stand up and be black. He’s not the young guy.”
Obama’s appeal to black men earlier this month drew a backlash. Speaking to a group of campaign volunteers in Pittsburgh, he struck a tone that some saw as reprimanding. He mused that black men who are inclined to sit out the race “just aren’t eager to have a woman as president, because you think of other alternatives and other reasons for it.”
The backlash came from unexpected quarters, including Stephen A. Smith, a prominent sports talk show personality.
Obama is undeterred, a person close to him said. He believes black male voters are important to a Harris victory and is focused on mobilizing what has historically been a loyal part of the Democratic coalition, the person said.
In an election that is still a toss-up, Harris wants to avoid any erosion of the black vote. Obama won 95% of the black vote in his first presidential bid in 2008 and 93% when he was re-elected four years later.
A New York Times/Siena College poll earlier this month found that 78% of black voters nationwide supported Harris — 12 points below the level Biden got in 2020 when he narrowly defeated Trump.
Even if she can’t improve her standing with those voters, Harris could still make up the deficit by outperforming previous Democratic presidential candidates among other parts of the electorate.
Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker said in an interview that he would argue that “we’re going to do better than the polls indicate with black men.”
Pritzker, who was in Las Vegas on Saturday for an abortion rights rally, added: “In a sense, you can target black men. But you can also say that there’s a vastly higher percentage of non-college-educated women who are supporting Kamala Harris than there used to be. So there’s been a little bit of a scramble in the election.”
In his most recent speeches, Obama has dropped the argument that sexism could drive male voters away from Harris.
He made no mention of race in Tucson or Las Vegas, arguing instead that men in general can be drawn to Trump because of the false impression that he’s a strong figure, an alpha male.
“I’ve noticed this, particularly with some men who think that Trump’s behavior, bullying and putting people down and acting like he’s a tough guy, is somehow a sign of strength,” he said in Tucson. “I’m here to tell you that this is not what real strength is. It never was. Real strength is about working hard and carrying a heavy load without complaining. Real strength is about taking responsibility for your actions and telling the truth, even when it’s inconvenient.”
That reasoning resonated with some black men who came to hear him. Trump exudes a kind of bravado that some men emulate, they said.
Kalid Meky, 53, is a black man and Harris supporter who drove 12 hours from California to see Obama’s speech in Las Vegas.
“With Obama, he can help to some extent and he’s started the dialogue. But I don’t think he can do much,” he said in an interview.
Trump is a white 78-year-old, but he has a “charisma” that some younger black men find attractive, he added.
He described Trump’s attitude as, “‘I do what I want when I want. I have a billion dollars. I don’t play by the rules. I talk the way I want to talk.’ They see that and they see hip-hop.”
In addition, some black men are wary of Harris because of her record as a former California prosecutor, Meky said.
“African-American men have had tough experiences with law enforcement,” he said, adding that she is a “former prosecutor and a lot of black men are like, ‘Does she like us?’”
There’s more to Trump’s rhetoric and life story that others find offensive. Harris’ campaign has emphasized that Trump sought the death penalty in 1989 for the “Central Park Five” — four black teenagers and a Hispanic teenager who were wrongly accused of raping a jogger in Central Park. Their convictions were overturned.
Trump was criticized during the campaign for claiming that immigrants were taking “black jobs.”
Johnson, the 23-year-old college student, is aware of Trump’s past and the accusations of racism.
“Does that bother me?” he said. “No. Am I supposed to think that Biden, an [81]-year-old white man, wouldn’t be racist too?”
“Obama talked a lot about race when he was running for president,” he added. “I’m not sure he was the most progressive president there’s ever been. He could have done more if he really wanted to. I think he did it to get elected, and that’s what I’m concerned about with Kamala.”