MAGA world’s sinister attempts to sway Black voters are on display

When it comes to Black voters, this year’s midterm elections have underscored that conservatives’ strategy is more steeped in trickery and suppression than persuasion.

At Donald Trump’s urging, Republicans enacted Jim Crow-style gerrymanders earlier this year that diluted Black voter power in several states. This is not the behavior of a party that wants to compete for Black voters by winning them over with compelling arguments.

And in this election cycle, conservative campaigns and donors have characteristically leaned on straight-up deception and manipulation in their efforts to target Black voters.

The list seems to grow with each passing day: The Black progressive in Ohio whose independent Senate candidacy Republicans have been propping up to try to peel off Black votes from Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown; the Texas Republican who shared an AI-generated video depicting Black voters backing his campaign; the Turning Point activists trying to boost Andy Biggs’ gubernatorial bid in Arizona by placing “Democrats for Biggs” billboards in Black neighborhoods in the Phoenix area.

And how about the super PAC — funded by a white GOP donor — that has been bombarding Black residents with propaganda about Michigan’s pivotal Senate race? Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed is facing off against Republican Mike Rogers, who has basically treated Black people like props while running one of the most bigoted Senate campaigns in recent memory.

As The Washington Post reported:

The text from “Ben with Empowering Black Americans” landed as Alisha Jackson walked a majority Black neighborhood trying to encourage reluctant voters to show up to the polls.

It warned her that Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat she wants elected to the Senate, “has been disrespectful and dishonest with Black voters. Are you supporting him?” it asked.

Empowering Black Americans, it turns out, is a super PAC with one known donor in federal records: a White businessman from Pittsburgh who donates to Republican causes.

There are other examples, to be sure. Earlier this year, I wrote about the flyers funded by a GOP-led PAC that invoked the Ku Klux Klan to target Black voters with propaganda meant to undermine Virginia Democrats’ response to MAGA world’s racist redistricting push. And a recent report from Sludge cited financial records showing that the nonprofit behind Black philosopher Cornel West’s long-shot presidential bid in 2024 — which West framed in explicitly pro-Black terms — received all of its money from a dark money group funded by Elon Musk. And Musk wasn’t the only rich conservative to back West’s campaign.

This kind of trickery appears to be the modus operandi of today’s Republican Party, which is aligned with an administration that promotes white supremacist propaganda and wages an assault on Black America in various ways.

That the GOP is leaning so heavily into deception reads like an acknowledgment that the party doesn’t have much to sell Black folks in the form of substantive policy.

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