‘We Change or We Die’
TEN YEARS AFTER ITS “AUTOPSY” of Mitt Romney’s 2012 loss to Barack Obama concluded that the Republican Party’s biggest problem was its failure to appeal to voters of col-or, 2022 is shaping up as a breakthrough year for the GOP on at least one diversity front: Black candidates. From Georgia, where high-profile Black Republicans seek nominations for both governor and senator, to Michigan, where former Detroit Police Chief James Craig is the oddson favorite to go up against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, to a lineup of well-funded House and Senate candidates poised to break the record for the number of Black Republicans elected to Congress, a decade-long effort to broaden the appeal of the GOP is finally bearing fruit—and could play a pivotal role in determining the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections.
It remains to be seen whether the coming wave of Black conservative candidates can spur legions of Black voters, the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency, to vote Republican. But judging by recent races featuring a Black GOP candidate—lieutenant governor races in Virginia and North Carolina, a Kentucky attorney general campaign and the last two U.S. Senate races in Michigan—the party has reason to be hopeful. Exit polls showed these Black Republican candidates drew slightly larger, potentially decisive shares of Black votes compared to the white Republicans running alongside them for other offices in their states. Indeed, North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and unsuccessful U.S. Senate hopeful John James in Michigan were the top votegetting Republicans in their states in their most recent races, indicating they both excited the GOP base and drew crossover votes.
“Some Republicans are savvy enough to under-stand that if they win 10 to 15 percent of Black voters in state and local elections, they can win—and there are ways to actually do this,” says Johns Hopkins University political science professor Leah Wright Rigueur, author of the 2016 book, The Lone-liness of the Black Republican.
One of the most important test cases this year may come in the Michigan governor’s race. Craig’s campaign to unseat Whitmer, Rigueur says, is “not about winning 100 percent of the Black folks, it’s not even about winning 50 percent. It is about winning just enough to push them over the edge and make the difference.” Craig echoes that, telling Newsweek his status as both a native Detroiter and well-regarded tenure as the city’s top cop grants him an authenticity with Black audiences that will “open some minds to what I have to say.”
Another indication that the GOP is chipping away at Black loyalty to the Democratic Party, ac-cording to Republican National Committee spokesman Paris Dennard: last year’s elections in Virgin-ia, where there were examples of Black Democrats losing to white Republicans in regions with sizable Black constituencies.
