Trump campaign’s plan to woo black voters: Retail stores
The centers will distribute pamphlets and sell merchandise, including hats and sweatshirts embroidered with the word “woke.”
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
President Donald Trump’s outreach to African American voters is coming to a storefront near you.
As part of an ongoing effort to increase Trump’s share of the black vote this fall, the president’s reelection campaign unveiled plans on Wednesday to open a series of “community centers” in empty retail spaces across the U.S. where paid staffers and volunteers will spend the next several months courting black voters with literature, celebrity meet-and-greets and “woke”-branded attire.
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The sleek new storefronts — a design rendering shared with POLITICO showed a bright interior outfitted with midcentury furniture and state-of-the-art wall graphics — will begin opening in March and are expected to span seven battleground states: Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
The goal is not necessarily to win the African American vote in 2020 — an implausible outcome — but to simply raise Trump’s share a few percentage points from the 8 percent he received in 2016. If Trump can take his African American vote share from single digits to the low teens, it could give him a boost in key states that are likely to decide the outcome of the election.