Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, facing slipping support from Black voters, unveiled a sweeping plan on Monday to bolster the finances and careers of Black men, as her campaign ramps up efforts to deliver policies targeting the crucial voting bloc.
The plan, called the “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” expands upon Ms. Harris’s “opportunity economy” pitch, building upon efforts to address the unique barriers that the demographic faces in starting businesses and building wealth.
Ms. Harris’s plan calls for providing one million loans that would forgive up to $20,000 for Black entrepreneurs and others to start a business, in an effort to close the capital gap that the population often faces.
The plan calls for expanding access to affordable banking options that will allow Black men and others to tap into more capital that they often cannot access because of high fees and other barriers. The plan also promises to devise a regulatory framework for protecting cryptocurrency assets, which more than 20 percent of Black Americans own or have owned.
Ms. Harris’s proposals also seek to create more mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities, and call for new investments to help more Black men become teachers. And the plan would begin a health initiative focused on the diseases that disproportionately affect the population — such as sickle cell, diabetes and prostate cancer — by expanding preventive screening programs.
Under the plan, Ms. Harris also pledges to legalize marijuana nationally and to ensure that Black men, who were once disproportionately jailed for using and distributing marijuana, can benefit from its business potential.
The campaign is facing pressure to shore up support among Black men, as polls show that Ms. Harris is receiving significantly lower support from the voting bloc than President Biden did in 2020. The slip from Mr. Biden’s 2020 numbers among Black men is striking: 70 percent said they would vote for Ms. Harris in November, down from Mr. Biden’s 85 percent in 2020.
This softening support has so alarmed Democrats that former President Barack Obama issued an urgent call this week for Black men to drop “excuses” and rethink sitting out the election.
Black men, particularly younger ones, have been steadily slipping from the Democratic Party, frustrated that their experiences are not reflected in policy as much as other groups’. Ms. Harris’s proposals appear to confront those concerns head-on.
A statement from the campaign announcing the plan said Ms. Harris “knows that Black men have long felt that too often their voice in our political process has gone unheard and that there is so much untapped ambition and leadership within the Black male community.”
This week, Ms. Harris will begin pitching the plan on the campaign trail, including on a town hall hosted by Charlamagne Tha God, host of “The Breakfast Club,” a nationally syndicated show that is particularly popular with Black millennials. Campaign surrogates will also sell the plan as they address Black communities in battleground states.
“The vice president is going to continue to talk about what she plans to do for all Americans. But I think that we believe, and the vice president believes, it is absolutely OK to talk about how this policy agenda is going to change the lives of millions of Black men once she’s able to get it done as president,” Quentin Fulks, her principal deputy campaign manager, said.
The plan reflects a series of issues that Ms. Harris has heard firsthand in conversations with Black men across the country, the campaign said, particularly during a nationwide “Economic Opportunity Tour” she began last spring. During those events, she discussed the Biden administration’s accomplishments, including increasing access to capital for minority-owned small businesses and building wealth.
Still, Ms. Harris’s opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, has been able to make inroads with Black Americans by pitching himself as stronger on the economy.
Mr. Trump and his allies have made the push for Black men by marketing gold sneakers to them, campaigning with rappers and claiming without evidence that those who cross the border are taking what he called “Black jobs.” Mr. Trump’s surrogates have held listening sessions in a cigar bar in Philadelphia while contending that the Democratic Party has abandoned Black voters.
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