The Republican National Committee is following through on its mission to court Black voters – last night officially opening its first Black American Engagement Center in College Park, south of Atlanta.
Dubbed a “community center,” the RNC says it is a sign of its intent to engage with minority voters ahead of the 2022 midterms, an area where the GOP has historically struggled. That said, in 2020 then-President Donald Trump managed to pick up six percentage points among black men and five percentage points among Hispanic women from 2016. He won Florida in large part due to gains made in Miami-Dade County, where he wooed Cuban Americans.
RNC National Spokesperson and Director of Black Media Affairs, Paris Dennard says that the center will be a place for outreach and engagement, and an opportunity to show off the Republican platform and how it differentiates from that of the current Biden Administration.
“We want to create and highlight the contrast between what we see now under the Biden Harris administration and having Democrats in total control of the government on a national level,” Dennard said. “We look at issues.”
Georgia Democrats, predictably, are not impressed.
“It’s both ironic and shameful that the RNC is opening an office in College Park while Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, is still trying to throw out the votes of Black voters in Fulton County after being resoundingly rejected by Georgians in 2020,” Rhyan Lake, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Georgia, said Wednesday afternoon. “Instead of making empty political gestures, the GOP should stop passing voter suppression laws that disproportionately hurt Black Georgians and denounce Trump and his hateful and divisive rhetoric.”
But if nothing else, the GOP is committing to expanding its voter base, hoping to build off the slight – though noteworthy – gains it made in 2020.
