When Donald Trump met with leaders of the Michigan GOP in March, he had a goal for them: win over Black voters.
Trump’s strategy wasn’t exactly novel. He wanted Republicans to target minority voters in Detroit and in the state’s southeastern region, hoping he could blunt the sharp advantage Democrats have enjoyed in those areas of Michigan.
As GOP Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan told NOTUS Tuesday, the goal isn’t to “turn Detroit ruby red.” It’s simply to make up a little bit of ground.
“We don’t need to pick up a ton of points,” she said. “We just need to pick up some.”
While hardly anyone expects Trump to completely turn around his numbers with Black voters, even slightly better numbers — or just reduced turnout for Democrats — could play a decisive role in Michigan and, consequently, the general election. And Trump and his campaign see an argument for flipping those voters.
“We’re all focusing on moving resources into areas that you normally would not have much presence from the Republican Party,” former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who’s now the Michigan GOP chair, told NOTUS on Tuesday. “There’s a tremendous amount of interest in activating and basically telling African American voters: ‘We would really be interested in getting your vote. We’re asking for your vote. We’ve got an agenda that we think should appeal to you.’”
Republicans have been looking at the same polling that has spooked Democrats nearly this entire election cycle — namely, surveys showing weakening support for Democrats among Black men. A poll from the NAACP found that one in four Black men under the age of 50 support Trump, a dramatic improvement over the former president’s results in 2020.
While Kamala Harris’ campaign has made significant investments in these areas to convince Black voters to come out for Democrats, Hoekstra told NOTUS there’s a real opportunity for Trump and Republicans.
He argued that Black voters are part of the union groups that have soured on Democrats, specifically pointing to polling data from the Teamsters showing that 59.6% of union members favor Trump over Harris, who would be just the second Black president. These unions, he said, are in the very areas Democrats control.
But perhaps most notable about that Teamsters poll is that, when Joe Biden was the nominee, Biden had 44% support among union members compared to Trump’s 36%. (The first poll was conducted from April to the beginning of July.)
“We have a higher opportunity to capture more of that vote than what we have in the past,” Hoekstra said. “Michigan is a close state, so if you go into some of these areas, you can get a few more percentage points when you do that with the Black community.”
“In a lot of these places, the auto industry is in what people would normally describe as strong Democrat areas, and we believe the issue is set for us,” he added. “So you got to make the case, and you got to ask for the vote.”
Other Republicans in the state have also endorsed the plan to target heavily Democratic areas. Anne DeLisle, a district GOP chair in Michigan, even said it didn’t matter where the voters were. “As long as they’re open to receiving the message,” she said.
“The historical context, election-wise, is that we saw in 2020 a larger number of Black voters voting for Trump. And you ask yourself, ‘Well why?’” she said. “Well, because they saw something in Donald Trump and in the policies specifically of Donald Trump that benefited them and those they loved and cared for.”
A spokesperson for the Trump campaign didn’t return a request for comment, but the Harris campaign accused Trump of using Black men “as a backdrop than addressing Black men’s concerns in Michigan.”
“No amount of photo ops changes Trump’s record spiking unemployment and his Project 2025 plans to take away our health care,” the Harris campaign’s Michigan senior adviser Eddie McDonald said. “We’re in the churches, at community centers, and online to highlight this contrast and make sure Black folks know the stakes of this election.”
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has said historic rates of Black voters now support the former president.
“The reason is simple: Black voters know that President Trump is the only presidential candidate who can deliver results on day one because he already has,” the campaign said in a statement in June.
That same month, the former president hosted a roundtable at a Black church in Detroit, and he launched a Black voter coalition program. Among Trump’s many visits to Michigan, he’s also made it a point to speak in areas with sizable Black populations like Saginaw and Flint. His running mate, JD Vance, has also followed suit, with rallies in Detroit and Macomb County.
When Vance spoke in Detroit on Tuesday, he noted that there were “a great number of Black Ameircans in this crowd right now” and made a direct appeal to Black voters.
“The story of Black Americans is actually very similar to the story of Appalachian white Americans,” Vance said.
“Donald Trump wants to bring back public safety and an economy that brings prosperity for everybody,” Vance added. “Good wages for good jobs, that’s the Trump promise. And I think that’s a great promise to Black families in Michigan and everybody else.”
But there are some Republicans on the ground who think it’s going to take more than campaign speeches and some outreach in these areas to sway these voters.
Martell Bivings, a GOP House candidate running in Detroit, told NOTUS that even though the state GOP had been investing in new areas, the strategy may not be effective. Bivings said young Black men may show some excitement for Trump now, but they also could “sleep through Election Day” if Republicans didn’t start making more personalized appeals.
He also said the GOP may be relying too much on traditional voter-outreach methods — like door knocking, social media ads and phone banking instead of alternative outreach that could get these low-propensity voters to the polls.
“I met this brother the other day. He was picking tomatoes at a community garden and we started talking. He said, ‘Hey, I remember meeting you, has the election passed?’” Bivings said, recounting a conversation he had with a voter in his district. “He’s eager to vote for Trump. He’s eager to vote for me. But he doesn’t know when Election Day is.”
Hoekstra didn’t deny that there had been disagreements about how effective the party had been in reaching Black voters. But he defended the strategies. “If we didn’t think these strategies were effective, we wouldn’t be using them,” he said.
Still, Hoekstra wouldn’t establish a threshold of success for Trump’s support among Black voters.
“I’m not going to put a number out there,” he said. “We’re asking for the vote. We’re at a point where we’re having a dialogue with the African American voters as to why they should consider voting for Republicans. We’re not going out and talking about percentages.”
Hoekstra did acknowledge that Republicans in Michigan needed to invest more in their ground game, but that seemed to be part of a broader issue for the Michigan GOP.
“It would be nice to have more money,” he said.
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Tinashe Chingarande is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.