President Barack Obama is heading to Virginia and New Jersey on Thursday to rally black voters ahead of elections of governors in both states next month.

Obama’s appearances are aimed to get out the vote for Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Ralph Northam, and financier Philip Murphy in Newark — two white candidates in predominantly black cities. The race in Virginia is close; Murphy appears to have a comfortable lead in New Jersey, The New York Times reported.

According to the Times, the Democratic party has struggled since Obama’s presidency to persuade black voters to show up for elections not involving the 44th commander in chief.

“If the party doesn’t change what they’re doing, we’re not going to take back the House, we’ll lose seats in the Senate and folks will come around after and say, ‘What happened?’” Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told the Times. “We are doing a pathetic job of reaching out to minority voters.”

Democrats also are focused on Alabama, where voters go to the polls Dec. 12 — and where former prosecutor Doug Jones is running for the Senate against social conservative Roy Moore.

“There is not one person in Birmingham who disagrees we need Doug Jones,” Randall Woodfin, the newly elected mayor of Alabama’s largest — and predominantly black — city, told the Times. “The issue is motivating them to come out and vote for him.”

Jones’s slim path to victory will require maximizing turnout among the quarter of voters who are black, while capturing about a third of the white GOP population, the Times reported.

Democrats have to go beyond “doing drive-bys in African-American churches,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., told the Times. “Those days need to be over if Democrats are serious about winning.”