Kamala Harris is desperate to turn out Black voters, but there’s one group within that voting bloc who isn’t exactly feeling the love: naturalized African immigrants.
“They say, ‘We see you.’ But they don’t see you,” one source familiar with Democratic Party efforts to court African voters told NOTUS. “Every diversity group is there in the DNC — LGBT people, women, outreach at college games. They’re all there. There is nothing African.”
Harris and Democrats have made some efforts with African voters. Lawmakers like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Gabe Amo have hosted events with African Diaspora for Harris-Walz, a coalition of African-immigrant grassroots organizations supporting the vice president. And, more broadly, Democrats have invested “seven-figure” sums into ad buys in more than 100 Black radio stations and Black publications such as Essence, Ebony and Black Enterprise.
But organizers involved in Democratic efforts to court African voters told NOTUS that Democrats aren’t paying enough attention to African-immigrant voters.
Part of the reason Democrats haven’t been as explicit about going after African communities may be political. These voters traditionally hold more socially conservative views and aren’t as staunchly Democratic as other Black voter segments, though African immigrants are still more likely to align with the Democratic Party than the GOP. But there also may be some practical reasons, like Democrats not seeing African populations as a distinct voting bloc within the Black vote.
“Within the Democratic Party, they look at all of us as Black,” Chuks Eleonu, executive director of African Diaspora for Good Governance, told NOTUS. “Right now, many politicians and administrators at the DNC are not aware that continental Africans are a force to be reckoned with.”
The number of African immigrants that can vote has steadily increased over the past two decades. More than 1 million African immigrants living in the United States were American citizens in 2022, a Pew Research Center study found. And many of them also reside in battleground states like Pennsylvania.
But Evelyn Joe, who emigrated from Cameroon and now works on voter outreach and registration in Maryland, said Harris isn’t doing much to attract African immigrant voters.
When NOTUS asked what Harris’ campaign had done to attract African voters, Joe said “nothing.”
“The continental African vote, they consider it a Black vote,” Joe said. “But they have qualitatively different issues.”
The Harris campaign did not return a request for comment for this story, and the DNC declined comment.
In an effort to bolster targeted outreach, organizers with Africans in the Diaspora for Harris-Walz have taken matters into their own hands, developing a get-out-the-vote operation to reach voters in battleground states such as North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Guy Djoken, chair of the Maryland Democratic Party’s Continental African Diversity Leadership Council, said his group’s strategy mimics the one created by the Maryland Democratic Party, where the state apparatus dedicates specific resources to engage African immigrant communities.
“My mandate is to make sure that I represent the party very well within our constituency,” Djoken told NOTUS. “And make sure, whatever the concern, make sure the party listens to the constituency and does whatever it takes so that we can work together moving forward.”
The council also relies on county data to locate neighborhoods with dense African immigrant populations, with that data eventually given to the state party to help it turn out the vote in those communities.
Other states, however, are playing catch up to Maryland’s institutional support for African-immigrant voter outreach. Africans in the Diaspora for Harris-Walz, for instance, relies on social media and word of mouth to locate neighborhoods to canvas and knock on doors.
The group also hosts weekly Zoom calls where it plans bus tours, invites leaders in the Democratic Party to address voters and solicits contributions to Harris’ campaign.
Eleonu described his group’s goals in three points: educate, empower and elect.
“The first part is we want to educate Africans about the vital importance of politics in our lives,” he said. “The second thing we do is try to empower individuals to learn the value of their votes and note that your vote is your only voice, and if you don’t vote, you don’t have a voice.”
“The goal is to actually go out there and vote,” he added.
Regardless, Africans in the Diaspora for Harris-Walz is operating full steam ahead and has reached upward of 25,000 voters since its inception, said Fatmata Barrie, one of the leaders of Africans in the Diaspora for Harris-Walz.
“People really wanted something like this, and so they gravitate toward it,” Barrie said. “This is where representation makes a difference. It’s important for when as Africans, we are trying to do things in the political environment that we support each other.”
The group also has its eyes on the role it could play in a possible Harris administration, and Barrie and her colleagues have begun talks with leaders in the Democratic Party to leverage the group’s power and influence on U.S.-Africa policy.
Barrie added that the plan is to ramp up lobbying for influence within a possible Harris administration as soon as the election is over.
“It’s top of the line on Nov. 6,” she said, referring to the day after Election Day. “Politicians believe that your vote, or lack thereof, can impact their ability to win. And so you work from that, organize, mobilize, raise funds, and you’re seen and you’re heard.”
The group is also looking to get more attention from the DNC to spur future investments into African-immigrant outreach efforts.
“They have ignored us for quite some time, but we are organized, mobilizing and also getting a message to the right people so that they know that we are here,” Djoken said. “We don’t want to be taken for granted.”
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct name of Africans in the Diaspora for Harris-Walz.