Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday laid out how her economic proposals could specifically help young Black men, a key Democratic voting bloc that polls show Republican former President Donald Trump gaining ground with in this election cycle.
"I think it's very important to not operate from the assumption that Black men are in anybody's pocket," Harris said in a sit-down interview with a panel from the National Association of Black Journalists. "I'm working to earn the vote, not assuming I'm going to have it because I am Black."
A new poll by the civil rights group NAACP released Friday found that more than a quarter of Black men under 50 years old support Trump over Harris.
To win those votes, Harris is focused on an economic argument. At NABJ, she described embarking on an "economic opportunity tour focused on Black men" earlier this year, before she was a candidate for president.
She also pointed to her work "getting billions more dollars" into community banks to expand access to startup capital.
"We have so many entrepreneurs in the community who do not have access to capital, but they've got great ideas, an incredible work ethic, the ambition, the aspiration, the dream ... but don't have the relationships, necessarily" to get financing or grow a small business, Harris said.
The Democratic presidential nominee cited proposals like a $50,000 small business tax deduction and the elimination of medical debt from credit scores — both of which she believes would target historic economic disparities within Black communities.
"When they do better economically, we all do better," said Harris.
Proposals like these could help Harris address two distinct vulnerabilities for the Democratic party in this election cycle: public perceptions of the economy, and young Black men who lean toward voting for Trump.
Before Harris took over the Democratic ticket from President Joe Biden in July, NBC News polling found 25% of Black voter respondents ages 18 to 49 favored Trump over Biden.
Biden won 92% of Black voters in the 2020 election, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. The prospect that Democrats could lose a quarter of prime voting age Black adults to a Republican set off alarm bells.
Polls suggest that Trump's unusual strength with Black voters this election cycle could be due in part to nostalgia for the pre-Covid economy that he presided over.
Over the course of the Biden-Harris administration, high costs of living became the utmost voter concern, as the U.S. economy precariously recovered from the sky-high inflation in the wake of the pandemic.
As Harris works to pitch herself as the candidate of economic relief, her campaign is simultaneously working to shore up Black voter support.
During his own sit-down with NABJ journalists in July, Trump drew backlash for impugning Harris' racial identity and calling her a "DEI hire." He also scolded the interviewers for their questions about his past remarks about Black people, which both Democrats and Republicans have said were racist.
"It was the same old show. The divisiveness and the disrespect," Harris said Tuesday about Trump's NABJ appearance. "And let me just say, the American people deserve better."
