CHICAGO (AP) — During Donald Trump’s first visit as president to Chicago, a frequent target in his attacks on urban violence, he dismissed the nation’s third-largest city as a haven for criminals and a national embarrassment.
At a recent town hall, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy sat alongside ex-convicts on the city’s South Side and vowed to defend Trump’s “America First” agenda. Instead, the little-known White House hopeful, the son of Indian immigrants, found a flicker of acceptance in a room full of black and brown voters.
The audience nodded as Ramaswamy said “anti-black racism is on the rise,” even as he pushed back against his promise to eliminate affirmative action and fight “woke” policies .
“America First applies to all Americans, not just the few that Republicans talk to,” he said.
Race has become a central — and sensitive — issue in the 2024 presidential race, with the GOP primary field so far featuring four candidates of color, making it one of the most racially diverse ever.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the first black senator in the South since Reconstruction, entered the contest earlier this month. He joined Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador who is of Indian descent, and Larry Elder, an African-American raised in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood who gained national attention as a candidate in the failed effort two years ago to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who is of Cuban descent, says he may enter the race in the coming days.
Most candidates of color are considered underdogs in a field currently dominated by Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
But the party’s increasingly diverse leadership, supported by evolving policy on issues like immigration, suggests the GOP may have a real chance in 2024 to further weaken the Democrats’ grip on African-Americans and Latinos. . These groups have been among the most loyal segments of the Democratic coalition since Republican leaders fought the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The 2024 Republican presidential candidates walk a fine line when addressing race with the GOP’s overwhelmingly white primary electorate.
In most cases, the various candidates in the Republican camp downplay the importance of their racial heritage. All deny the existence of systemic racism in the United States even as they discuss their own personal experience with racial discrimination. They oppose policies on policing, voting rights, and education designed specifically to benefit disadvantaged communities and combat structural racism.
The NAACP recently issued a travel advisory for the state of Florida under DeSantis’ leadership, warning of open hostility “toward African Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.” The notice calls for new policies enacted by the governor that include blocking public schools from teaching students about systemic racism and defunding programs aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion.
Republican presidential candidates of color largely support DeSantis’ positions.
Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League, said the GOP’s policies are far more important than the racial and ethnic diversity of its presidential candidates. He noted that there were also four Republican candidates of color in 2016, the year Trump won the White House after playing on tensions over race and immigration.
“White nationalists, insurgents and white supremacists seem to find solace in the (Republican) party,” Morial said. “I think we’re beyond the politics of just the face of a person of color alone appealing to people of color. What do you stand for?”
With few exceptions, the Republican candidates entering the presidential primary field have embraced the GOP’s “anti-wokeness” agenda, which is based on the idea that policies designed to address systemic inequalities related to race, the gender or sexuality are inherently unfair or even dangerous.
DeSantis last week described these policies as “cultural Marxism.”
Still, the GOP’s diverse camp doesn’t ignore race. Indeed, some candidates are making their race a central issue in their appeal to Republican primary voters, even as they deny that people of color face systemic challenges.
Scott insisted that America is not a racist country in his recent announcement speech.
“We are not defined by the color of our skin. We are defined by the content of our character. And if someone tells you something different, they are lying,” he said.
In her announcement video, Haley noted that she was raised in a small town in South Carolina as “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants, not black, not white, I was different.” Like Scott, he has defended the GOP against charges of racism.
“Some think our ideas are not only wrong, but racist and evil,” Haley said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Elder is quick to criticize the Democrats’ “woke” agenda, Black Lives Matter and the notion of systemic racism.
Critics say these messages are actually designed to win over white suburban voters rather than attract voters of color. But on Chicago’s South Side on a recent Friday afternoon, there were signs that some black voters were open to the GOP’s new messengers, given their frustration with both political parties.
An attendee at Ramaswamy’s town hall waved a flyer calling for a “Boycott Biden” because the Democratic president has not indicated whether he supports reparations for the descendants of slaves, even though Biden supported a congressional effort to study the question None of the GOP presidential candidates support reparations either.
Others condemned Democrats, in Chicago and Washington, for doing more to help immigrants who are in the country illegally than struggling African-American citizens.
Federal officials were preparing to move hundreds of migrants from the US-Mexico border to the southern side, even as many local residents struggled with violence and difficult economic conditions.
“It’s true that there are multiple shades of melanin in this Republican race,” Ramaswamy said in an interview before the event. “I think it kind of dispels the myth that a lot of the left will perpetuate that this is somehow, you know, a racist party or whatever nonsense.”
He added: “But personally, I could care less what someone’s skin color is. I think what matters is what they’re going to achieve? What’s their vision?”
For now, the GOP has no Hispanic candidates in the 2024 contest. But Suarez, the mayor of Miami, said that may change in the coming days.
“I think it’s important for the field to have candidates who can connect and motivate Hispanics to continue a trend that’s already happening,” he said in an interview, noting that he is “very strongly” considering a run for the White House “Democrats have failed miserably to connect with Hispanics.”
A majority of Latino voters supported Biden in the 2020 presidential contest, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive national survey of the electorate. But Trump eroded that support in some competitive states, including Florida and Nevada, revealing major shifts among Latinos from many different cultural backgrounds.
In last fall’s midterm elections, support for Republican candidates grew among black voters, even as they continued to overwhelmingly support Democrats, AP Votecast found. Overall, Republican candidates received the support of 14 percent of black voters, compared to 8 percent in the midterm elections four years earlier.
While the changes may be relatively small, strategists in both parties acknowledge that any change is significant given how close some elections in 2024 may be.
In Chicago, Tyrone Muhammad, who heads Ex-Cons for Social Change, blasted Republicans as “losers” for not seizing a very real opportunity to win over more African Americans. While sitting next to Ramaswamy on stage, he also declared that the Republican Party is racist.
She later said she voted for Trump in 2020 because Trump enacted a criminal justice bill that aimed to shorten prison terms for non-violent drug offenders and address racial disparities in the justice system . While the GOP has since adopted tough-on-crime rhetoric, Muhammed noted that Biden as a senator helped pass the 1994 crime bill that led to the mass incarceration of black people.
Muhammad said he might vote Republican again in 2024, despite the party’s shortcomings. He pointed to the GOP’s fight against illegal immigration as a primary reason for support.
“I may not like you as an individual, but I like your issues, I like your policies,” he said.
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Fields reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa contributed to this report.
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