Black turnout key to House fight

Hillary Clinton is not the only Democrat scrambling to rally black voters to the polls next month to temper the drop-off widely expected from a presidential election without Barack Obama on the ballot.

House Democrats are also hurtling to energize African-American voters, who compose a meaningful bloc in a number of battleground districts and could prove the deciding factor in races spanning from Florida to California.

{mosads}Districts where the black vote is most significant tend to be urban seats that are safely Democratic — including those held by Reps. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) in Memphis, where 64 percent of voters are African-American, and John Lewis (D-Ga.) in Atlanta, where the figure is 60 percent.

But there are also a number of House battleground districts where the black vote exceeds or approaches double digits — districts where African-American turnout could prove vital.

“It’s in those smaller metropolitan areas where Democrats are locked in tight races and where there is a moderately strong African American presence where their turnout might be decisive,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University.

GOP Rep. Cresent Hardy, for instance, is fighting for a second term in a Nevada district where the focus has been on the Hispanic vote, but 15.7 percent of voters are black, according to internal figures compiled by the Democrats’ campaign arm. A similar dynamic surrounds Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R), who’s in a tough contest to retain his South Florida seat where blacks make up 13.5 percent of voters.

Other notable Republican-held districts where the black vote could be a factor include those held by Florida Rep. John Mica, at 9.5 percent; Kansas Rep. Kevin Yoder, at 9.0 percent; Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman, at 8.8 percent; California Rep. Stephen Knight, at 8.3 percent; and Rep. Barbara Comstock, a freshman from a Northern Virginia district where 7.4 percent of voters are African-American. 

Rep. Brad Ashford (Neb.), the most vulnerable Democratic incumbent this cycle, might also be affected by black turnout. In his district — largely Omaha — blacks make up 9.7 percent of eligible voters.

Democrats would need to win all of these seats and more to gain the 30 districts needed to retake the House majority. To make even a significant dent in the GOP majority, Democrats will need to win many of these states — and turnout by black voters could be the difference. 

The party is expected to enjoy an overwhelming advantage among black voters who do choose to vote. 

Black voters backed Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, with overpowering majorities in 2008, at 91 percent, and 2012, at 87 percent. 

Donald Trump, who has occasionally promoted tweets by white supremacists during the campaign, may be even less popular with black voters than previous GOP presidential nominees. Polls conducted in Ohio and Pennsylvania over the summer found Trump with zero black support in both swing states. 

With turnout in mind, Rep. Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), head of the Democrats’ campaign arm, adopted a strategy early in the cycle that emphasizes minority engagement, voter registration drives and efforts — like encouraging early voting — to ensure that voters actually cast a ballot.

“Obviously, African Americans tend to vote for Democrats, but in no way are we taking them for granted,” said Meredith Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

Few experts expect black voters to come out in the rates Obama attracted in 2008, 65 percent, or 2012, 67 percent — the highest figures since the Census began keeping track in 1968. But Democrats are also hoping to keep drop-off to a minimum and maintain black turnout above the rates in 2000, which was 57 percent, and 2004, at 60 percent. 

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that that is a concern,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), a former Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) chairman, told The Hill last month. 

“There’s a natural drop-off” because Obama is off the ticket, he added. “It’s not like they’re anti-Hillary; it’s just, you know, ‘Well, he’s gone.’ … It would have been the same if it had been [Joe] Biden or anybody else.” 

William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, has crunched the numbers in an effort to predict the state-specific effects if the trends governing the black vote in 2004 re-emerged this year. The study, conducted jointly with researchers at the Center for American Progress, found that the Democrats would lose Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina — with presumed effects down the ballot.

“It can make a big difference,” Frey said Wednesday by phone.

Hoping to energize minority voters, Democratic campaign strategists are hoping to tap Obama’s popularity by featuring the president more prominently in the homestretch to Nov. 8.

“You will see more messaging related to Obama — and even from the president himself — about maintaining his legacy, carrying it forward and building on it,” said Kelly of the DCCC.

As another strategy, the Clinton team on Wednesday rolled out several top black lawmakers, including CBC Chairman G.K. Butterfield (N.C.) and Rep. James Clyburn (S.C.), the third-ranking House Democrat, to trumpet the Democratic nominee as the obvious choice for the issues that matter most to black communities, including education, housing and access to credit. Lewis, an icon of the civil rights movement, has also been hitting the trail for Clinton and down-ballot Democrats. 

“This election, this year, is probably the most consequential election, at least of my lifetime,” Clyburn said. “[We need] to make sure that we get as many people to the polls as we possibly can.”

Both Clyburn and Butterfield have been among the Democrats who have urged the Clinton campaign to shift more campaign funds to tight down-ballot races, largely for the purpose of energizing the African-American vote.

“We’ve got to get a turnout in the African-American community that equals or surpasses the white turnout,” Butterfield told The New York Times earlier this week.

A Democratic strategist downplayed the significance of that conflict, noting that all sides wish there was more money to spread around. 

“I don’t think it’s a difference in principle,” the strategist said. “Already their investments in places like Nebraska have been very helpful. … They can always do more, and I think they know that.”

Trump, meanwhile, is making a late play for black voters in the final weeks of the campaign. Appearing in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday, the GOP nominee blamed Democrats for failing African-Americans with decades of flawed policies. Trump said his plan, by contrast, would deliver “safe communities, great education, and high-paying jobs.”

“African-American citizens have sacrificed so much for our nation,” he said. “Yet too many African-Americans have been left behind.”

Trump’s campaign raised eyebrows on Thursday after Bloomberg reported of an aide boasting of “three major voter suppression operations” — legal strategies designed to keep blacks and other Democratic voters from casting a ballot. 

The news is sure to enrage Democrats, particularly CBC members, who have been up in arms since the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That 2013 decision empowered a number of states, almost all of them Republican-run, to adopt a bank of tougher voting laws — including new photo ID requirements, shorter windows for early voting and the elimination of same-day registration — that critics warned would discourage voting by blacks and other groups.