Telling Black Voters the Truth

I don’t get why Republicans spend millions trying to persuade a tiny percent of the electorate who are undecided, but spend absolutely nothing trying to add more voters to their coalition.

Case in point. 27% of black Americans and 40% of Hispanic Americans tell pollsters they consider themselves conservative when it comes to economics and politics. Mostly, these men and women oppose abortion, support tax cuts, care about national security, and appreciate the free enterprise system.

But here’s the shocker. The same black voters who call themselves conservative vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. In fact, 95% of them vote for people who are on the opposite side of nearly every issue they believe in.

Why? How can it be that people who love the same American values we conservative Republicans love vote so overwhelmingly against their own interests?

That’s the question a group of us asked 5 years ago. And here’s the shocking truth of what we learned. Republicans NEVER speak to these particular voters. Now, you might think I’m exaggerating. That, after all, blacks and Hispanics have the same access to TV News, the press, and the internet as everyone else, and so they must see what Republicans are saying. Yes, that’s partly true. But the bigger reality is they only see what the liberal mainstream press is saying, and what the Democrats tell them in their advertising.

The reality is that Democrats spend hundreds of millions of dollars every election cycle on advertising that claims conservative Republicans are evil … that we want to repeal anti-lynching laws — or ship Hispanic Americans to some other country … or that we are racists who want to keep minorities down. You and I know none of it is true, but if Republicans don’t communicate to these voters, how can they know the Democrats are lying?

They can’t. Republicans don’t run ads on the radio stations these voters listen to, or the tv programs they watch, or on the web sites they frequent. And if conservatives aren’t even bothering to deny the lies Democrats tell them, then most of these voters — and all the other voters out there — believe those lies are true.

That’s why Stars and Stripes Forever PAC was formed. We decided someone needed to reach out to minority voters with messages that are pro-Amercan, free enterprise, and conservative. We named our PAC to honor my great grandfather because he loved America and the freedom and opportunity this country provides ALL Americans. He would have been appalled that a whole group of Americans were making their election decisions without even hearing the conservative, pro-American message.

And that’s what we’re doing. I’m happy to report we’re now running ads in 3 U.S. Senate campaigns and in just a few days, we’ll start in a 4th. The states we’re currently advertising in are Wisconsin, Missouri, and Indiana. On June 18th we’ll start in Ohio. These are all states where a liberal Democrat incumbent is in trouble against a conservative candidate. They are the states where we have the best chance to elect more conservatives to the Senate this year.

Our message is simple. We want black voters to understand that liberal Democrat policies hurt prosperity and opportunity with less freedom, higher taxes, more crime, and a lower quality of life. And those policies hit black families especially hard. Despite trillions spent in the war on poverty, liberals have only made things worse for blacks: higher unemployment, less opportunity, poorer education, a higher rate of abortion, higher incarceration, more crime … you name it and blacks are paying a terrible price for failed leftist promises.

And we know our message is working because we’ve seen it work. In 2016, we placed radio ads in 5 swing states targeted to black voters with a series of conservative messages to help elect Donald Trump.  

• States targeted for the ad campaign in 2016 included: Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.  

• In those 5 states, Trump received 2 and half times the black votes Romney received.  

• 76% of Trump’s total winning margin in those 5 states came from black voters, just 13% of the electorate.  

• In Michigan, black votes for Trump clearly made the difference between winning and losing. In Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, black votes contributed substantially to Trump’s winning margin.

• In three of the 5 states where Stars and Stripes ran statewide commercials — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — Donald Trump was the first Republican for President to win in decades.  

• Wisconsin last voted for a Republican Presidential candidate in 1984; Michigan and Pennsylvania last went for a Republican in 1988.

• Black turnout actually increased in Michigan by 16% from 2012.  Trump received more than 50,000 black voters in Michigan, more than enough to cover his 11,423 margin of victory in Michigan.”

Conservative candidates spend millions talking to an increasingly smaller percentage of “persuadable” voters, but they allow liberal Democrats a monopoly on advertising to blacks and Hispanics. That has to change if conservatives have any hope for success in the future. Stars and Stripes has shown we can make as much as a 20% difference in the votes of blacks and we’re just getting started.