PHILADELPHIA _ Walking down the street in West Philadelphia, a pedestrian could overlook the "Black Voices for Trump" sign taped to the glass door of the Republican Party's newest Pennsylvania field office.
One of 17 centers that have opened around the country this summer under the Black Voices for Trump banner, the office is part of a GOP effort to make inroads in predominantly African American communities.
The field offices are paid for and staffed by Trump Victory, the joint of the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump's reelection committee.
At the Philadelphia center's Saturday opening, Paris Dennard, senior communications adviser for Black Media Affairs at the RNC, said that the party intends for these offices to be a base of operations for volunteer training sessions and door-to-door efforts, which the GOP has resumed with social distancing and masks.
"We want this center, and these centers all across the country, to be a meeting place so that people can get educated," Dennard told a group of 12 volunteers. "There are places where we can go and should go," he said of the GOP's plans to have volunteers canvass minority communities.
The GOP has a long-standing disadvantage with Black voters that widened when former President Barack Obama was elected. It has only partially recovered that support.
Trump famously appealed to Black voters in 2016 with the message, "What the hell do you have to lose?" He went on to win 8% of the Black vote that year.
The previous Republican to win the White House, former President George W. Bush, won 11% of the Black vote nationwide. That suggests that Republicans can potentially win a larger share of the African American vote.
The Trump campaign and the RNC see an opportunity to expand GOP support in African American communities in 2020. In addition to Black outreach offices in cities such as Tallahassee, Milwaukee and Detroit, the GOP now has two Black Voices for Trump centers in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania _ in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Trump's gap in support with African Americans in Pennsylvania could make the difference in a close election. He won the state by just 44,292 votes four years ago.
Bush lost the state in 2004 but won 16% of the African American vote, according to exit polls. Trump had a slim 7% of Black support in Pennsylvania in 2016.
California Sen. Kamala Harris' reentry into the 2020 presidential race as Democratic nominee Joe Biden's running mate could contribute to a further decline in Republican support in Black communities. Harris is the first woman of Black and Indian descent to appear on a major party's presidential ticket.
Milo Morris, a coordinator for the Bucks County Republican Committee who attended the Black Voices for Trump office opening last weekend, told McClatchy the choice in 2020 for African American voters is "not as simple" as it may seem with Harris on the ballot.
"Simply putting somebody up there because they match a demographic, that's tokenism. If that person adds value, now you're talking, a real multicultural effort is being made there. But if that person doesn't really bring anything to the table, then it's just a face that happens to match a demographic," he said. "At least for us, on this side of the political spectrum, she brings negative value to the table."
Dennard argued that Harris, who made headlines during the Democratic presidential primary after she confronted Biden during a debate about his record on race, is an "opportunist and a phony." He encouraged volunteers to remind their friends and family that Biden told undecided voters "you ain't Black" and said in an interview that "unlike the African American community," the Latino community has diverse attitudes.
"People in our community need to know the truth about Joe Biden and a Kamala Harris," he said. "Joe Biden is a bigot. There's no proper or better way to say it, because that's what he is," Dennard added.
Biden has apologized for the comments.
"Joe Biden and Kamala Harris got into this race, in part, to advance progress on racial equity and ending systemic injustices and defeat a racist president who has done everything in his power to fan the flames of white supremacy, while utterly failing to contain a pandemic that has disproportionately hit communities of color," Jamal Brown, national press secretary for the Biden campaign, said in a statement to McClatchy in response to Dennard's remarks.
"No number of field offices can help explain away this failure to lead and the lives and livelihoods that have been lost because of it. Our campaign will continue to put the health and safety of the American people first and ensure voters have the resources they need to safely cast their ballot for Biden-Harris," he said.
Trump has faced his own share of race-related controversies since he became president. His comments in recent weeks about low-income housing in suburban areas have drawn severe criticism.
"They're going to, in my opinion, destroy suburbia. And just so you understand, 30%-plus of the people living in suburbia are minorities. African American, Asian American, Hispanic American _ they're minorities," he said at a press briefing. "The number is even higher, it's _ they say 35, but I like to cut it a little bit lower."
His campaign has meanwhile carried out a plan to open Black Voices offices around the country, after announcing it earlier this year, then delaying it because of the coronavirus.
Trump's campaign is emphasizing that Black unemployment was low prior to the pandemic, a Republican-led effort to fund Historical Black Colleges and Universities and the creation of opportunity zones to offer investment incentives for distressed communities.
Biden's pick of Harris as his running mate has not affected the campaign's outreach to Black voters, Katrina Pierson, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, told McClatchy in an email.
"Nothing that the Democrats say or do will change our strategy that we put forth in February," Pierson said.
