Sharpton heads to Michigan in effort to mobilize Black voters for Harris

Rev. Al Sharpton is heading to Michigan on Thursday in a get-out-the-vote campaign targeting Black voters as polls show Vice President Harris struggling with younger members of the voting bloc. 

With stops in Detroit, Pontiac, Flint and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Sharpton plans to speak to Black voters about what is at stake for Black Americans this election and urge them to cast their ballots for Vice President Harris. He’ll be joined by Terrence Floyd, the brother of George Floyd, as well as Korey Wise and New York City Council member Yusef Salaam, two members of the Central Park Five, to help make his case. 

“Voting rights, reproductive health, economic opportunity, educational access, and other hard-won rights for our communities are at their greatest risk in generations, which is why we must paint the polls Black on November 5th,” said Sharpton in a statement.

“Over the last month I have traveled the country, from Philadelphia to Columbus to Atlanta, to remind Black voters of what we lose if we stay home on Election Day,” he added. “Black men, who Donald Trump has tried to wrongly court by thinking his 34 felony convictions appeals to them, have especially heard from Korey and Yusef how he attacked them as teens and what he really thinks of them. In these final two weeks, we will make this case even stronger that Black Americans have a choice to go back to the 1950s or make the most of the 2020s.”

Sharpton’s Michigan trip follows stops in Philadelphia and Ohio with other Black leaders including Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio). 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’s running mate, and former President Obama have also made tours through the battleground state. 

The final push to turn out Black voters comes as Harris’s numbers with Black men appear to be slipping, even as her lead with the voting bloc remains steady in battleground states. 

A recent Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion poll found that 84 percent of Black likely voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will support Harris in November. 

But a wide gender gap persists. 

University of Chicago’s latest GenForward poll released Wednesday found that if the election were held today, 26 percent of Black men said they would vote for former President Trump. 

Still, Harris is aware of the slipping support, and she sat for a town hall in Detroit with Charlamagne tha God last week where she fielded questions from Black voters across the nation. 

She also recently released her “Opportunity Agenda for Black Men,” highlighting how she plans to create economic opportunities for the demographic if she is elected.