African Americans overwhelmingly oppose the president but the West Point grad, fighting for a Senate seat in Michigan, insists race is no bar to being a Republican

Ted Nugent filled the cavernous hangar with a rasping, distortion-heavy rendition of The Star Spangled Banner, inverting the politics of Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock. Donald Trump Jr, accompanied by girlfriend and former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, emulated his father’s raucous circus act with jibes, untruths and a question: “Honestly, what do you have to lose?”

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Then a 4,000-strong crowd dotted with “Make America Great Again” caps erupted in chants of “USA! USA!” as Republican candidate John James, a military veteran and businessman anointed by the president as a “future star”, took the stage. At ease in blue jacket and white shirt with open collar, he gestured to his wife Elizabeth’s pregnant belly and declared: “You see, this is number three! Number three! Yeah!” The spectators roared.

It looked and sounded like a Trump rally. But James, no far-right demagogue, is African American and bidding to become the first black person from Michigan elected to the US Senate.

“I recognise what it took to get me here and I never disrespect the struggle and I will never give up on my people,” he said, to applause. “I recognise that too many have died for me to have the right to think independently.”

James is that rare phenomenon in a contemporary politics riven by cultural and racial tribalism: an African American on Team Trump. From cabinet member Ben Carson to Kanye West to conservative media star Candace Owens, this small but outspoken group believes Democrats have long taken black people for granted only to let them down. But their alliance with a man frequently and widely accused of racism, who effectively launched his political career by questioning whether Barack Obama was born in America, appears to some observers a contradiction in terms.

James, a charismatic 37-year-old with a compelling life story, is from what Trump likes to call “central casting”. He is a graduate of West Point who spent eight years in the army, including service in Iraq, logging more than 750 flight hours leading two Apache platoons. He is the president of his family business, an international logistics support provider. His official website describes him as “a pro-life, pro-second amendment, pro-business conservative”. He is a long-shot Senate candidate against career politician Debbie Stabenow, who has held the seat since 2001.

At Wednesday’s rally in Pontiac, Michigan, a rust belt state that stunned the nation in 2016 by voting for Trump, the James campaign was pushing some very traditional Republican buttons. A giant stars and stripes hung above the stage. James’s logo combined the flag with an Apache helicopter. Slogans on a giant TV screen declared, “Battle tested, ready to lead” and “Protect the American dream”.

But in contrast to the smash-mouth style of Trump Jr, Guilfoyle, Nugent and “Bikers for Trump” founder Chris Cox, and musical interludes from Kid Rock, James pivoted to respect for his opponent and a narrative of hope and inspiration.

“My father was from the Jim Crow south, born in 1941 in Starkville, Mississippi,” he said in closing remarks. “Lived directly across the street from Mississippi State University – couldn’t go there because he was black. But he refused to accept dependency as his destiny. He had every excuse in the book and he refused to be a victim.

I believe there is a system that’s kept black folks locked up, drugged up and uneducated for decades John James

“He decided to work his way through college, serve honorably in Vietnam and then come to Michigan, where the economic opportunity was. Michigan is the home of the American dream. It’s the birthplace of the middle class. And now one generation away, he’s got a son knocking on the door of the US Senate. That is only possible in this country.”

The message was well received by an overwhelmingly white, middle-aged crowd who saw nothing paradoxical about an African American riding the Trump bandwagon.

Kenneth Andersen, a navy veteran and retired city official, said: “You’ve got to vote for the person, not the race. Trump is not a racist and never has been. He’s done a hell of a lot for the African American community and Latino community. It’s the lowest unemployment rate for 50 years. They keep thinking they’ve got to vote Democratic but the Democrats haven’t done anything for them.”

Last week Trump held a wild Oval Office meeting with West, who sported a “Make America great again” cap that he said made him feel like Superman. Andersen, 68, added: “Kanye West is accused of being Trump’s ‘little negro’, as they say. We had eight years of Obama, who made the race relationship worse than it has been for 50 years. I didn’t care whether Obama was black or white: I didn’t like his policies. I didn’t like the direction he was taking the country.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ted Nugent performs in front of John James’ campaign logo in Pontiac, Michigan. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

Another spectator at the rally, Mike Sand, a member of the group Veterans of Foreign Wars, said: “We want to make America what it used to be.”

What is that? “Baseball, apple pie, Chevrolet, traditional Christian values. I grew up on those.”

But didn’t America also used to be Jim Crow? “A lot of things needed to be corrected. But we’ve got away from the basics. We got too far to the left. I’m a retired school teacher and I see the kids are being brainwashed by the left.”

Sand, 70, described Trump as an “outstanding” president. “He says what he thinks. I say what I think. I go to a restaurant and see a family of African Americans and I say, ‘I don’t hate you’. They say, ‘Thank you, we appreciate you saying that’.”

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One of only a handful of African Americans at the rally was Clinton Tarver, a hot dog caterer who always votes Republican. “People see a black American and they think automatically he’s a Democrat,” he said. “I hope people look past it and see John James is a great man who could bring a lot to DC.”

Tarver, 68, believes the current president is doing a better job than his predecessor. “My wife and I have met Donald Trump and he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. I was glad we had a black president but some of my black Democratic friends don’t like Obama now because he didn’t do anything for them.”

‘Tokenism and distraction’

Gallup polls show Trump’s approval rating among African Americans hovering between 10% and 15%. Self-inflicted wounds have included lambasting African American football players who “take the knee” during the national anthem more vehemently than white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville; reportedly referring to “shithole countries” in Africa; and falling out with Omarosa Manigault Newman, once the most senior black staffer in a White House that desperately lacks diversity.

The president is anathema to Detroit, which has a higher percentage of African Americans than any other major US city, and where Hillary Clinton won most precincts with more than 90% of the vote. John Conyers III, whose father campaigned for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King and served in Congress for 52 years, is a partner at Detroit’s first minority-owned hedge fund. Sipping red wine in a fashionable bar that typifies the city’s downtown renaissance, he did not mince words.

It would seem Mr James is attempting to be the … non-threatening black male, Samuel L Jackson in Django Unchained John Conyers III

“John James is, I think, a symptom of the notion that if you play by a certain set of rules, if you play America’s game, then you’ll be accepted,” the 28-year-old said. “I’m not against African Americans being conservative. It’s when you try to whitewash yourself. It would seem that Mr James is attempting to be the acceptable minority, the non-threatening black male. He’s Samuel L Jackson in Django Unchained.

“If those are his core values, if that’s where he aligns morally, I can’t tell him not to, I can’t make him see why him publicly taking these stances and staking out a position in that way is harmful. I would rather him feel strongly and vehemently about that than to waffle and say he’s going to be a Democrat and then consistently sell us out, because that would be worse.”

Conyers agrees with the critique that Democrats have failed African Americans by too often trying to appeal to middle ground voters. But he added: “John James isn’t going to move the needle for any black people. James, Owens and Kanye are personae non grata in the black community, obviously. Black Republicans tend to be more affluent and those three don’t speak to anyone new. They are examples of tokenism and distraction.”

As for Trump, Conyers describes the president as “white supremacist adjacent”. So, can it ever make sense for an African American to support him? “It depends on where your morals are. You can support Donald Trump if your bottom line is economic and becoming a part of the 1%, taking advantage of every opportunity to get ahead in a disingenuous way. Then, of course, absolutely anybody can support Donald Trump because you don’t identify with anything but personal gain.”

James is striving to avoid making race the defining issue of his candidacy at a time when Trump has set identity politics on fire. Earlier this week he was forced to apologise when a Nazi swastika was inadvertently glimpsed on a school bulletin board in one of his campaign ads. In an interview with the Guardian on Friday, he put some distance between himself and the president, praising the first amendment and the importance of journalists’ work. Although he has previously said he supports Trump’s agenda “2,000%”, James clarified that this is “subordinate” to the constitution and Michigan.

We have failed policies that have kept us in debt and dependent and shackled our minds and destroyed our families John James

“I believe there is a system that’s kept black folks locked up, drugged up and uneducated for decades,” he said carefully. “We have failed policies that have kept us in debt and dependent and shackled our minds and destroyed our families and retarded our upward economic mobility.

“When you look at areas around Detroit that look like the riots happened yesterday and you understand that African Americans have marched from Selma to New York, we’ve rebelled from Watts to Detroit and nothing’s changed in 50 years, and you consider the fact that the Democratic party has neglected us, the neo-progressive movement is abandoning us and Republicans haven’t even tried, then you have to recognise and realise that in this country it’s our fault. When 90% of us vote in one party, then neither party has to work for a vote. That’s what I try to tell people: indignation will not fix this; only influence will. We need a seat at both tables and it’s time for a change.”

James was raised in Detroit by Democrats and is now married to a white woman; he argues that the party lost its identity and resorted to identity politics. “We know what prejudice looks like when it comes to us on our skin or what’s between our legs but some folks are remarkably prejudiced when it comes to what’s between our ears. Having differences of opinions these days are considered heresy and I think that is fundamentally and diametrically opposed to who we are as Americans.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump with Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the aide who he later fired. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/Pool/EPA

“I would just try to appeal to the people who would call me a name or form an opinion without keeping an open mind and ask them: do you truly believe that an African American from Detroit is going to be bad for African Americans from Detroit?”

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Trump has reserved some of his most divisive rhetoric for football players, such as Colin Kaepernick, who demonstrate against racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem. James says he disagrees with “the method of protest” but “will defend to my death his ability to protest in this country”.

He continued: “The president’s opinion is his own but mine is one of someone who loves this country but also one who loves his countrymen, one who both understands what it’s like to be an officer to patrol areas that are hostile to you but also what it’s like to be a black man.

“I also understand what it’s like to be pulled over in a well-to-do suburb and wonder why my heart is racing, my palms are sweating and I’m breathing heavily when I see the red and blue lights in the back, and I realise that my body is reacting in the same way it would in combat. Because there is something in me that wonders if this is the night that my five-year-old son is going to see his daddy bleed out in the street.

“I recognise that this is very serious and the only way that we are going to solve this is if we have people representing us who can relate.”

‘A 40-year battle’

The Senate currently has one African American Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina. Michael Steele, a friend of James and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, recalls being called “a lawn jockey” and “Uncle Tom” when he ran for the Senate in Maryland in 2006.

Candidates for office “go through the gauntlet of putting their name on the ballot and standing before a community of people who in one sense look at them as a traitor and in another sense look at them with a big question mark: why are you a Republican?” Steele said. “The journey is different for everyone. I don’t know if John James and other African American candidates running in this cycle have had to deal with the name calling and the whispers. It certainly defines the walk you walk.

I don’t know if John James and others have had the name calling and the whispers. It certainly defines the walk you walk Michael Steele

“For me this has been a 40-plus year battle inside and outside of my party. A lot of these guys are just new to the game. What I like to tell them is as much as they think the game has changed, it hasn’t, and at some point that truth comes home.”

James is unlikely to win his first election but he has already made his mark. Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a political analyst and author of Why Black Lives Do Matter, said: “If he was a Democratic candidate he would be a formidable political newcomer. However, he’s not. The GOP tag is a insurmountable crippling political liability, especially in a state like Michigan with African American voters who are lockdown Democrats and loathe the GOP.”

The number of African Americans who support Trump is very small, Hutchinson argues, with motives ranging from celebrity to a liking of the president’s pro-business, small government pitch.

“The contention by James and other conservative black people that the Democrats exploit black people and give little back is a bogus, self-serving argument,” he added.

“Black people are overwhelmingly Democrats precisely because there are tangible benefits the Democrats provide when it comes to fighting for civil rights, jobs, defence of pubic education and union and labour protections: the very things that the GOP has steadfastly opposed and eroded. The GOP with its court and pander to bigots for the past half-century has done everything it could to slam the door on black people.”