Why Harris needs Detroit’s Black men

Oct 08, 2024

By Brakkton Booker, Gloria Gonzalez and Jesse Naranjo

What up, Recast fam! A programming note: We’re off next Tuesday for the long Indigenous Peoples Day weekend. But we’ll be back Wednesday, Oct. 16. Without further ado, today’s agenda:

Michigan’s lieutenant governor on how Kamala Harris is mobilizing the state’s Black men.
Joe Biden made a historic move back in May for U.S. territories. Will it even matter?
Donald Trump is increasingly using xenophobic rhetoric to talk about immigrants.

Photo illustration shows torn-paper edge on image of Garlin Gilchrist speaking at inauguration ceremony.

Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist says it's important for the Harris campaign to maximize Black voter turnout in his state. | POLITICO illustration/Photo by AP

To say Garlin Gilchrist is a towering figure in Michigan politics is an undisputed fact.

At 6 feet, 8 inches tall, the state’s lieutenant governor has been tapped as a surrogate for the Kamala Harris campaign, working to shore up voters in his critical swing state as well as in neighboring Wisconsin.

Gilchrist, 42, is Michighan’s highest-ranking Black politician. He’s in the sweet spot of a demographic that some national and swing state surveys suggest are falling away from Harris: Black men. Polls — including one out today from AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research — found that while Harris has overwhelming support from Black voters overall, more than 1 in 5 Black men said her Republican opponent Donald Trump would make a good president.

Back in 2020, Trump won just 12 percent of Black men nationally, according to Fox News’ exit poll, indicating his sustained outreach to this voting bloc is working.

Now, Harris is locked in a pitched battle for Michigan’s 15 electoral votes. Most polls show her with a slight lead over Trump, but within the margin of error.

I’m just back from a reporting trip in Detroit, where I caught up with Gilchrist after he made remarks alongside Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford and New York Attorney General Tish James at an event aimed at encouraging Black men to mobilize people they know have tuned out of politics.

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The event was uplifting and energizing. At one point, James told the crowd, “I believe in the power of Black men,” and led a call and response of “Where the brothas at?” to whoops and boisterous applause.

I talked to Gilchrist about how crucial it is for the Harris campaign to mobilize Black men in Detroit, whether it needs to be doing more outreach and the disconnect these men sometimes feel with the messaging.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

THE RECAST: The attorney general of New York just delivered a rather direct and emphatic pitch to this room full of Black men that was both praising and uplifting. She received a standing ovation when she was done. Should the vice president adopt a similar approach?

GILCHRIST: Well, I think you need to unpack that question. So one, I think what Tish James represents with what she said is something that I have seen the vice president deliver directly to people in Detroit. Now that may not have been in a rally or a speech or something like that. But she didn’t just start coming here when she was running for president.

And one of the things I found so compelling about [the vice president] is that she appreciates an opportunity to connect with people, and I think she's connected with a lot of Black men.

She’s told them they are important to the present and the future of this country and that has been part of her agenda. When you look at the $50,000 credit to start a business, that is a result of a series of conversations that Kamala Harris had with Black entrepreneurs who she welcomed to the Naval Observatory to meet with her. And her Opportunity Agenda Tour, the second stop of which was here in Detroit at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, I was one of the people who gave remarks there.

And ultimately … when people ask, “Whatcha gonna do for me?” She is putting people on a path to wealth — that's what the plan is.

Dana Nessel, Garlin Gilchrist, Tish James and Steven Horsford pose for a photo.

From left, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, Gilchrist, New York Attorney General Tish James and CBC Chair Steven Horsford attend a Black voter turnout event Sunday in Detroit. | Brakkton Booker/POLITICO

THE RECAST: In speaking with Black men here in Detroit and around the country about Harris, there seems to be this feeling that outreach from surrogates and the campaign itself is, in some ways, chastising. Like, “C’mon, Black man,” instead of softening the tone to say, “Hey brothas I see you, let’s do this.”

GILCHRIST: [Harris] had that energy when she was here on Labor Day, for example, right in Detroit, at a Black high school.

I guess I reject a bit of that premise.

THE RECAST: I think my pushback then is she may have been in Michigan that day — at a Black high school — but it was not an event targeting Black people or Black men. Some community activists point out she was inside at a ticketed event but there were a lot more people taking part in a Labor Day march outside. So it speaks to this idea that people are not feeling the love, not feeling the touch of this campaign.

GILCHRIST: Look, I think there's always an opportunity to do more. I started my career as a community organizer, I always wanted to have more touch, more input. I think we can always see more, sure.

But again, part of the job of organizers is to agitate. That’s how the system and the process works. So I think it’s a good thing when people say: “Hey, I appreciate what you’ve done here, but we would love to see even more.” Honestly, that's the kind of leadership that we want — when we agitate, when we reach out, that person responds. I think we've seen that from her in the campaign.

THE RECAST: You are the highest ranking Black man in the state. You are a native of Detroit. The math here historically is pretty simple — if the city and its majority-Black voting population show up on Election Day, it is likely Michigan goes for Harris. Does there need to be a shift in messaging to the city?

Garlin Gilchrist stands in the Michigan state Capitol.

Gilchrist attends the State of the State address Jan. 24 in Lansing, Michigan. | Al Goldis/AP

GILCHRIST: There are a lot of Black votes in a lot of parts of Michigan, so we need to maximize turnout in the Black community in Detroit, we need to maximize turnout in Flint — there’s a reason why she did a rally there. It’s the second-largest concentration of Black voters in [the state of] Michigan. There are Black voters in Saginaw, Pontiac, Benton Harbor, Grand Rapids, and so I think the plan needs to be to mobilize all of them.

THE RECAST: Finally, let’s talk about saving American democracy, talking up Trump and Jan. 6 and Project 2025, which some in the party have called Jim Crow 2.0. Do you think that is a salient argument to win over voters of color, particularly Black men, some of whom say life under the Trump presidency wasn’t all that bad?

GILCHRIST: I think we need to make a lot of different arguments.

Project 2025 wasn’t part of my remarks today, but I do believe that one of the things that's important to Black males as a community is being able to build wealth. And the example that I cited specifically was about what Trump-appointed judges did to the Minority Business Development Agency. It is a direct example of how a Trump administration actually was that bad in terms of taking away this conduit for the federal government to support and be a partner to Black people who had ideas on how to reduce that [racial] wealth gap.

There are so many ways and reasons that he's dangerous for our potential. I don't think [the Harris] campaign has had a blanket conversation with Black folks in general. I just think we have to continue to put all the arguments on the table.

THIS WAS A HISTORIC MOVE FOR TERRITORIES

Puerto Rico delegation cheers at DNC.

Americans living in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico don't have the same rights as those living in the states, including the ability to vote in presidential elections. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The unequal treatment of residents in U.S. territories — the majority of whom are racial and ethnic minorities — has spanned Democratic and Republican administrations alike. And it ties back to a series of Supreme Court decisions starting in 1901.

The Insular Cases established that the roughly 3.6 million people in American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands do not have all the same Constitutional rights other Americans do. An obvious example: They don’t have the right to vote in presidential elections.

But President Joe Biden’s Justice Department made a historic move in May: It wrote a letter saying that it “unequivocally condemns the racist rhetoric and reasoning” of the cases, pledging to no longer rely on them when defending laws and the administration’s actions. Then, in a July memo, the DOJ cemented that guidance for its litigators.

This was a significant admission by the federal government. But will it even matter?

According to interviews with more than a dozen legal experts and advocates, probably not. The Biden administration isn’t exactly pushing for the Insular Cases to be overturned, they note. Experts like Sergio Marxuach, policy director and general counsel at the Center for a New Economy, also say the administration didn’t go far enough to condemn the cases in other, related court battles. They cite what they argue was a missed opportunity for the government in United States v. Vaello Madero, a 2022 decision in which the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution doesn’t require Congress to offer disability insurance payments to residents of Puerto Rico, even though they are U.S. citizens.

“It really doesn’t have that much binding power,” Marxuach said of the letter. “It's just a memo from a lawyer.”

As Luis Fuentes-Rohwer, a law professor and civil rights expert at Indiana University, Bloomington, put it: “They’re not saying we’re getting rid of [the Insular Cases]. They’re not saying we’re fighting colonialism.”

Addressing the Insular Cases has not been a priority for any branch of the federal government. Lawmakers like House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) have urged the Supreme Court to overrule the decisions. But the high court has declined to do so, even though conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch and liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor have denounced the cases. The court separately rejected an appeal in Fitisemanu v. United States, in which citizens of American Samoa asked a Utah court to declare they were American citizens.

Still, optimistic academics and activists hope the Biden administration’s position — and, should she win, the new Harris administration — will pressure Congress to finally address the status of the territories. And they point to swing state Pennsylvania’s large Puerto Rican population as an incentive for Democrats.

“This is an issue that can move Puerto Ricans in the United States,” said Adi Martínez-Román, Puerto Rico-based co-executive director of Right To Democracy.