President Joe Biden is going to Philadelphia to launch a new campaign designed to woo Black voters to his side. The jump off point will be at Girard College, a majority Black college prep school.
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to the school on Wednesday for a campaign rally that would act as a launch pad for the "Black Voters for Biden-Harris" initiative.
According to The Hill, Black leaders will join Biden and Harris for the kickoff event. Among those who will be supporting the initiative include Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and Congressional Black Caucus chair Steven Horsford (D-Nev.).
The Biden campaign also revealed that the initiative will entail working hand in hand with Black organizations to increase the campaign's reach among Black voters. It will also include an eight-figure investment in advertising designed to help win back support from Black voters, which polls noted have wavered in their support of the president.
CNN reported that the launch at the majority-Black college in Philadelphia is intended to revive a part of a larger group that helped in Biden's victory in 2020. Surveys have suggested that there was already an erosion of support, particularly from Black men.
"Our campaign believes that Black voters deserve to hear from Team Biden-Harris, and they deserve to have their vote earned, not assumed," the campaign stated ahead of the event.
"No campaign has valued Black voters like we have, including through investing earlier and with more money than ever before talking to Black voters."
"This coalition and the newly announced summer outreach and engagement programming serve as the next phase of our campaign's ongoing historic investments in outreach to the backbone of the Biden-Harris coalition – Black voters," principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said.
Despite its earlier efforts, the Biden campaign was not seeing the results that it wanted. Many polls still found Black voters not giving the expected support to the Democratic Party, the lowest by far in decades. Earlier this month, a New York Times/Siena College survey conducted in battleground states noted that Trump was winning more than 20% of Black voters.
