Kathleen Gray

Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

For Debra Gatson, this year’s election is even more important than the one in 2008, when the Detroit resident voted for the nation’s first black president.

The 61-year-old remembers the excitement she felt in casting a ballot for Barack Obama that year and again in 2012. This time, she’s motivated by a different sentiment.

“This particular election is going to throw us back to 1950 or move us forward into the 21st Century,” said the retired director of probation for the 36th District Court in Detroit. “Donald Trump is only qualified to run his mouth. I’m definitely voting against him.”

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It’s a refrain echoed time and again among African-American voters in Wayne County and its biggest city, Detroit. The campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is counting on these votes to help pave her path to the White House.

Democratic votes by African Americans are a key reason why Michigan has been painted blue in every presidential election cycle since 1992. In presidential election years, turnout in Michigan, which has a population of 9.9 million, increases by nearly 2 million votes. In a county like Wayne, the state’s largest with seven cities where minorities are the majority and an overall population that is 50% white, 39% black and 6% Latino, that means nearly 300,000 more voters are casting ballots, predominantly for Democrats.

In 2012, Obama won in Wayne County with 73% of the vote over Republican Mitt Romney, son of popular former Michigan governor George Romney. In 2008, Obama won 74% of the vote over Sen. John McCain. The margins were even more stark in Detroit, where Obama won 98% of the vote over Romney and 97% of the vote over McCain. In 44 Michigan voting precincts, most in Detroit, not a single vote was cast for Romney in 2012.

The same trend played out in cities across the state and nation with African-Americans majorities, with Obama winning 78% of the vote in Richmond, Va. (49.4% black), and 91% of the vote in Washington, D.C. (50.4% black).

“Democrats have demonstrated for years their success in getting African Americans to the polls and getting at least 80% to 90% of the vote,” said Mario Morrow, a Detroit political consultant. “But with the recent discovery of Donald Trump that he needs to reach out to black voters, it seems to be even more of a grassroots project for Democrats to reach out to their base.”

It’s the reason the Clinton campaign has been sending in surrogates to Detroit in recent weeks, from the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Bill Clinton to actor Sean Astin and Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C. They’re registering voters and getting signed pledge cards from people promising to make it to the polls.

Unlike Republican candidates in recent years, Trump has begun making forays into the African-American community, speaking in early September at Great Faith Ministries International, an African-American church in Detroit, taping an interview on the Impact Network, the television network founded by Great Faith Ministries pastor Bishop Wayne T. Jackson, and heading to Flint last week for a tour of the city's beleaguered water plant before giving brief remarks at a church in the city.

In the 2008 and 2012 elections, votes from African Americans represented about 13% of the overall total nationally, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. And black vote totals went up more in the crucial swing states of Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, giving Obama the clear Electoral College edge he needed for victory.

The enthusiasm gap

Payton Julian, a 21-year-old student at Wayne State University in Detroit, said the election didn’t initially hold much interest for her this year. But the Cleveland native plans to register to vote for the first time, with the escalating cost of college tuition foremost on her mind.

“I wasn’t really into the election in the beginning. The two candidates don’t really fit my style,” said the interior design major. “But I’m leaning more toward Hillary because of some of the thoughts she had about college and how it should be more affordable. But mostly because I’d rather have her than Trump. It’s sad to say that, but that’s what it comes down to now.”

The Clinton campaign is well aware of that enthusiasm gap. It’s hard to follow Obama among African-American voters. And a recent EPIC/MRA poll, done in Michigan Sept. 10-13 for the Detroit Free Press and WXYZ-TV, showed Clinton slipping among black voters. While she got 90% of the vote among African Americans in EPIC/MRA's poll done in August after the two political conventions, that number slipped to 79% in the more recent poll. Those votes, however, weren't going to Trump, who only received 2% support from black voters, but rather were falling into the undecided category.,

Many black voters interviewed said they’ll cast a ballot for Clinton not because they like her, but because they’re afraid of the country moving backward under a President Donald Trump.

“I am forced to vote for her because I cannot vote for Donald Trump. We’re left with no choice,” said Gwen Broadneck, 79, of Detroit. “I can’t even begin to say all the things I don’t like about him. First, he’s a bigot.”

Morrow, the consultant, ticks off all of the missteps from the Trump campaign likely to keep voters in the Democratic camp: his leadership in the so-called birther movement, questioning Obama’s citizenship; his continuing denigration of Hispanics, Muslims and women, and his tone when talking about African Americans in front of largely white audiences as a community beset by poverty, violence and despair. Trump’s signature tagline in recent weeks — “What the hell do you have to lose?” by voting for him — is particularly galling, he said.

“What do you have to lose? My integrity was my response,” said Morrow, who is black. “Simply put, you’re telling me, you’re asking me to forget everything that you’ve said and done.”

The Rev. James C. Perkins, pastor of Greater Christ Baptist Church in Detroit and president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, said Democratic voters have to remember the issues important to them, even if they don’t like or trust Clinton.

“We always vote our need. We listen to the candidates in both parties,” he said. “We have to vote our issues and not the personality. We have to vote for the person who is going to go to office and represent our interests.”

Those interests, the Rev. Jesse Jackson told a group of 47 ministers from churches across metro Detroit during a meeting in September, include: protecting the right to vote and the future makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, ensuring the Affordable Care Act remains intact and expanding Medicaid coverage to states that refused to take federal money to help poor people and increasing the minimum wage.

In Michigan, other issues also are driving African-American voters, including the Flint public health crisis caused by lead contaminated water and the state’s emergency manager law, which was passed by Republicans in 2012 and has allowed the state to take over financially struggling cities and school districts in predominantly African-American areas.

“As for Hillary’s issue about trust, we can trust that she’ll fight for gender equality and racial justice, workers’ wages, the right to vote and health care,” Jackson said. “If we start with all that, she has the track record of doing that.”

The ministers will take that message — vote your need — to their congregations in the coming weeks. And by Election Day on Nov. 8, many congregations across metro Detroit will have seen local, state and federal candidates at their churches.

Courting voters in Detroit

When Trump visited Great Faith Ministries International in Detroit earlier this month, about 300 people greeted him warmly, even as about 200 protesters outside decried both his presence in Detroit and the church for hosting him.

Alphonso and Saretta Wallace of West Bloomfield attended the service and said they had an open mind about his candidacy.

“I would like to hear more about what his economic plans are regarding the African-American community,” Alphonso Wallace said.

The Michigan Republican Party has made a concerted effort to court the African-American vote, especially after Romney’s drubbing among Detroiters in 2012. The party opened a Detroit office three years ago as a way to both attract black voters to the party and recruit volunteers and candidates for office.

Both McCain and Romney spoke at the annual national convention of the NAACP a month before the 2008 and 2012 elections, respectively. But neither was successful in capturing the black vote. Nationally, Obama won 95% of the African-American vote in 2008 and 93% in 2012. John Kerry got 88% of the black vote in 2004.

“Trump brings his own unique set of challenges, but at the same time he brings opportunity because there are a lot of people who have already heard of him, and there are people who are attracted to him just by his celebrity,” said Wayne Bradley, African-American engagement director for the state Republican Party. “Maybe sometimes he’s made it difficult, but people are willing to listen to what Trump has to say.”

Trump’s visit to Detroit, Bradley said, was a good first step toward capturing some of the black vote in Detroit. Still, he acknowledged that may only mean Clinton wins 90% of the vote.

“But if this is the only thing he's got planned for black outreach, it won't be enough," he said. “If this is the beginning, this is what he needs to do because people are looking for a reason to support Donald Trump because they don’t trust Hillary Clinton.”

Melissa El, 63, of Detroit said she listened to Trump and thought he handled himself well.

“It’s the first time that we can remember that a Republican candidate reached out to the African-American community in such a palpable way," she said. “But it didn’t make me more likely to vote for him. I still don’t believe he’s qualified to lead the most powerful country in the world and be the most powerful man in the world.”

Trump’s real intention, said Republican political consultant Katie Packer, who was one of Mitt Romney’s campaign managers in 2012, is to shore up his standing among moderate Republicans wary of his strident rhetoric on everything from race to immigration.

“He has good pollsters who are telling him that ... he’s not collecting his share of Republicans that you have to have to be competitive,” she said. “A lot of people view him, in the worst case, as a racist or at least someone who is very comfortable with racists.

“He’s trying to demonstrate that he’s willing to reach out to nontraditional audiences because his pollsters are telling him that he has numbers with women that are not sustainable,” Packer added. “None of this is real outreach to the African-American community. Over his entire campaign he hasn’t expressed any interest in that particular group.”

Getting out the vote

The outcome of Michigan’s electoral votes could come down to one factor: African-American turnout.

The Revs. Jackson and Wendell Anthony told the ministers gathered earlier this month two stories with very different endings.

Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, reminded them of their jubilation when voters delivered Michigan to Jesse Jackson in the 1988 presidential primary. Michigan was one of 11 states to give Jackson victories, thanks in large part to a strong showing in Detroit.

“Remember how you felt when Jesse Jackson won Michigan in 1998,” Anthony said. “We cannot allow this legacy to be taken in vain.”

And Jackson uttered the one name — former Michigan governor John Engler — that strikes a chord with Democrats to explain what happens when African Americans don’t vote. In the 1990 gubernatorial election, Engler, then a Republican state senator, beat incumbent governor Jim Blanchard by 17,595 votes. A strained relationship with then-Detroit mayor Coleman Young and an unenthusiastic electorate led to Blanchard’s demise, despite him being up in the polls by anywhere from 4% to 17% in the weekend before the election.

It’s a lesson Blanchard still remembers. Walking in the Detroit Labor Day parade, Blanchard said getting out the vote is key to the 2016 election.

“On getting turnout, it’s kind of a lazy point of view when people say ‘I don’t like either of them, I’m not going to vote,’” Blanchard said. “I think it’s going to be a very successful election and presidency, but the first step is getting the vote out. We do need to work really hard to motivate our base.”

Thom Gatson, 63, a production technician with Ford Motor Co. and the husband of Debra Gatson, said this is not the year to stay home on Election Day.

“This is more important than the last two votes. The election of Barack Obama was a prelude to the changing of this country,” he said. “When he got elected, it changed everything, it changed the rules. Black parents didn’t have to wink and have their fingers crossed behind their back and tell their children ‘yes you can be elected president.’ The next question is how are we going to advance past that? Are we ready to put a woman in the White House? Who will be the next minority and after that, the possibilities are endless and truly, the Constitution will apply to everybody.”

Even though Debra Gatson believes she’s voting for the lesser of two evils, she has no plans to sit this one out either.

“We were youngsters when the civil rights movement happened,” she said. “We don’t take the right to vote lightly.”

Contact Kathleen Gray: kgray99@freepress.com or on Twitter @michpoligal