Democrats have a problem with black men. Hispanic men too, and minorities in general.
Thirty percent of black men in battleground states intend to vote for Donald Trump according to a Wall Street Journal poll, and 11 percent of black women.
Protesters wearing “Blacks for Trump” t-shirts speak to the press outside the Wilkie D. Ferguson Jr. United States Courthouse in Miami, Fla., on June 13, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times
A spate of recent polls show similar results, with black, Hispanic, and Asian voters who lean Democrat trickling downward while the number who lean Republican rises.
“It shows up consistently in survey after survey, and it also shows up in actual electoral results going back to 2016,” Matthew Wilson of Southern Methodist University, told The Epoch Times.
The economy is a key driver of this movement.
“Biden can’t hide from this economy,” Charlie Kolean of RED PAC told The Epoch Times. “Minorities see that big government is no longer helping them but hurting them.”
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Whitley Yates, diversity engagement coordinator for the Indiana Republican Party, says many black voters feel let down by Democrats.
“They have been promised things every election cycle ... without any type of progress for those communities,” Yates told The Epoch Times.
“The way this economy has impacted the black community has been catastrophic,” Yates added.
Generation and gender influence the trend according to Marcurius Byrd, a Democrat organizer from Columbia, South Carolina.
“Our generation didn’t grow up with the things that a lot of people who lived through the Civil Rights era did,” Byrd told The Epoch Times.
“This is probably less of a race-based thing, more of a gender-based thing,” Byrd said, noting that he has known more black women than men who are Republicans, but more black men than women who are Trump supporters.
It could be that some black men are looking for a “strong candidate,” he suggested.
Either way, men are leading the shift. “I would say black men are the tipping point of this movement,” Yates said.
Immigration is a huge issue for black and Hispanic voters, but it hits differently with each group.
Hispanics who immigrated legally tend to see America as a land of opportunity and many have worked hard to be successful.
“[They] are very upset with what’s happening at the southern border,” Yates said because they’re getting tarred with the same brush as illegal immigrants. And they see the problems they escaped showing up here, like drug trafficking and cartel activity.
African Americans are more likely to object to what they see as deferential treatment given to people who illegally entered the country.
“It’s causing some racial tension between the black community and the Hispanic community,” Yates said, citing the example of some minorities who have been denied subsidized housing but see the government housing illegal immigrants.
The shift in minority sentiment has implications for the 2024 election.
“Democrats are rightly terrified at the apparent erosion in their margins among black and Hispanic voters,” Henry Olsen of the Public Policy Center told The Epoch Times.
“Any significant drop off in their margins or in the overall level of minority turnout dooms them to defeat.”
Other analysts are less certain of the impact.
“We'll see, when people actually go to vote in November, whether Republicans are able to get close to 20 percent of the black vote,” Wilson said. “If they do, that would be huge.”
—Lawrence W. Wilson
Cattle rancher Jim Chilton displays the 40-caliber handgun he carries when he goes out on his 50,000-acre ranch in Arivaca, Ariz., on March 22, 2024. Allan Stein/The Epoch Times
ILLEGAL BORDER-CROSSERS MAKING LIFE ON RANGE UNPLEASANT
There’s the song that goes: “Home, home on the range; Where the deer and the antelope play; Where seldom is heard, a discouraging word, And the skies are not cloudy all day.”
But for rancher Jim Chilton and his wife, Susan, it has been anything but that utopia as their area has seen a stream of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.
There was a time when the couple did not mind illegal crossers using spigots on their property in order to get fresh water. But those days are over as the couple are fed up with the border crisis under President Joe Biden.
Under Biden, Chilton said he began to notice the illegal border-crossers looked quite different from the ones he’d earlier met and for whom he felt pity.
Since 2021, he’s collected 3,050 images of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States and compiled them into nearly two hours of video.
Chilton has been forced to accept the risks that go with his chosen way of life during a time of unbridled illegal immigration.
And he is no small man when it comes to defending himself: He stands around 6 feet dressed in a checkered button-down shirt, vest, blue jeans, and white cowboy hat.
He carries a firearm whenever he’s out and about on the ranch. In his splendid Spanish-style ranch house, he keeps a semi-automatic rifle loaded and ready, just in case.
Members of the MS-13 gang knocked on their door and asked if they could use the couple’s phone, but Susan said “no.”
After all, it’s not the illegal immigrants who come asking for help that the Chiltons find so upsetting. It’s the constant stress of living their senior years in the shadow of the cartel and knowing their once private lives are no longer their own.
Getting to the border wall from the Chilton ranch is a rough drive. It takes nearly two hours of bucking and bouncing over rocky dirt roads, dry riverbeds, and mountainous terrain to reach the border fence deep within the Coronado National Forest on the U.S. side.
At the end of the day, the Chiltons are not going anywhere just because of the crisis at the border.
“We have a family cemetery here. I’m either going to be on top of the ground or below the ground—but I’m not leaving,” he said. “You’re either a cowboy or a wimp.”
—Jackson Richman and Allan Stein
BOOKMARKS
A revised FISA bill that would reauthorize the surveillance powers for two, rather than five, years is heading for a House floor vote today, two days after 19 Republicans sunk a procedural vote to advance another version of the legislation.
O.J. Simpson died at the age of 76 following a battle with cancer, reports The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips. While he had a Hall-of-Fame career on the gridiron, it was off the field where Simpson was better known as he was the defendant in one of the most closely-watched trials in American history as he was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. In 2008, Johnson was sentenced to 33 years behind bars for armed robbery and kidnapping but was freed on parole after serving the minimum nine years.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing Donald Trump’s trial related to the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, rebuked the former president for calling the Jan. 6 defendants “hostages,” reports The Epoch Times’ Zachary Stieber.
The former interpreter for Los Angeles Dodgers star pitcher Shohei Ohtani, Ippei Mizuhara, has been indicted on federal charges of allegedly stealing $16 million from Ohtani, reports The Washington Post’s Gus Garcia-Roberts. Mizuhara has been charged with bank fraud. Ohtani is one of the best players in baseball since coming to the MLB from Japan several years ago.
Conservatives could take back the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year following the retirement of liberal justice Ann Walsh Bradley, reports The Washington Examiner’s Elaine Mallon. The state supreme court became 4-3 in favor of liberals when Janet Protasiewicz was elected to it last year. Expect abortion to be a major issue in the election. After 2025, the next state supreme court election will be in 2028.
