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Post by Admin on May 24, 2020 7:36:49 GMT
Amy Klobuchar performed abysmally among black voters in the Democratic primary. It’s haunting her now as Joe Biden decides on a running mate. The Minnesota Democrat has the governing experience and ideological profile to mesh well with Biden, and she’s regularly appeared as a surrogate and a fundraiser for him, raking in more than $1.5 million for a single event she headlined. The pair have a warm relationship, trading phone calls when her husband was hospitalized with Covid-19 and they didn’t tangle publicly during primary. But more than a dozen black and Latino strategists and activists warned in interviews that selecting Klobuchar would not help Biden excite black voters — and might have the opposite effect. Klobuchar would “risk losing the very base the Democrats need to win,” said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, which promotes women of color in politics. They pointed to her poor performance among non-white voters during the presidential primary, as well as her record as a prosecutor in Minnesota. It’s not yet clear how much the opposition of activists matters to Biden. He's made clear that the electoral politics of his pick matter less than choosing someone who can be a governing partner and step into the top job without worry. But the vocal contingent of African American and Latino detractors — many of whom said they would prefer Biden to select a black woman as a running mate — is unique to Klobuchar; Elizabeth Warren, another top contender for VP, doesn’t elicit similar antagonism from communities of color. "It comes from her performance in the primary — her weakness in being able to motivate them," said Adrianne Shropshire, executive director of BlackPAC, who supports several potential vice presidential selections. “The engagement and the enthusiasm of black voters is going to be a difference-maker in this election, and the concerns about her in this role stem from the degree to which she resonated or not with those core constituencies.”
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Post by Admin on May 24, 2020 23:03:01 GMT
Just before February's South Carolina primary, Amy Klobuchar landed a coveted chance to address African American leaders. When the black activist and journalist Roland Martin learned about it, he was outraged. Martin fired off a text to Al Sharpton, the longtime civil rights leader hosting the event: How could he offer such a valuable platform to Klobuchar, who he felt had ignored the black community and brushed off his interview requests? Sharpton let the senator from Minnesota speak, but when she was done he instructed her to talk to Martin, pointing him out from the stage. "Y'all need to talk to the black press," he told her as the audience looked on. The unusual public scolding underlined a chief weakness in Klobuchar's current drive to be Joe Biden's running mate: her strained relations with African Americans. The tensions, rooted in part in her record as a Minneapolis-area prosecutor, hurt her presidential aspirations and have come storming back into the spotlight now that she is increasingly seen as a top candidate to join the ticket. In response, Klobuchar is urgently courting the black community. In recent weeks she has aggressively reached out to African American groups, introduced a voting rights bill, joined an NAACP town hall, worked with black leaders and granted interviews to African American journalists. But some say it's too late to improve her standing after decades of friction. "In the next two weeks? I don't know what that would look like," said Rashad Robinson, executive director of the Color of Change, a racial justice nonprofit. As a county prosecutor, Klobuchar was too harsh toward nonwhite defendants, particularly African Americans, critics say, and as a U.S. senator she's done little to help the black community. In seriously considering Klobuchar, Biden's camp is making "a dangerous and reckless choice," said Aimee Allison, a leading activist for women of color. Biden has strong support from African American voters, but many of his allies in the black community warn him not to take it for granted. On Friday, Biden told an African American radio host during a discussion of black issues, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black."
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Post by Admin on May 25, 2020 4:33:58 GMT
After a furor, the Biden campaign rejiggered a conference call with black business leaders, having the candidate personally call in to the meeting instead of just staff as planned. "Perhaps I was much too cavalier," Biden told them. "I know that the comments have come off like I was taking the African American vote for granted. But nothing could be further from the truth." Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden at a rally for his presidential campaign in early March. The radio host - Lenard Larry McKelvey, who goes by Charlamagne Tha God on the show - told The Washington Post that Biden should definitely not pick Klobuchar, especially after Friday's remark. "I think that would be suicide for Joe Biden's campaign," he said. "If he did that, especially at this moment, after the comments that he made. . . . He would be a fool not to put a black woman as his running mate." Black voters are a cornerstone of the Democratic coalition, especially in the swing states expected to decide the November election. Biden has promised to select a female running mate, and some Democrats, including Sharpton, are urging him to make it a black woman - such as Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., or former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Because Biden is 77 and many Democrats believe he will not seek a second term, his running mate could have an early shot at becoming the next president. That has ratcheted up the excitement level among both black leaders and women's groups, who see an elusive goal suddenly within reach. Supporters of Klobuchar, 59, view her as a tested choice, a pragmatic centrist who could instantly step into the presidency. "She'd be a very hard-working, tireless running mate," said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the first African American elected to his post. Ellison was a criminal defense attorney when Klobuchar was a prosecutor, and he said his experience with her was positive, adding, "Amy would be an excellent vice president." During the Democratic primary, she garnered few endorsements from elected black leaders and claimed just 1% of the black vote in South Carolina, according to exit polls. She left the race two days after her sixth-place finish there. Some black leaders had called for Klobuchar to drop out even earlier, when the Associated Press published a story exposing flaws in the prosecution of Myon Burrell, a black teenager who was convicted of killing an 11-year-old in 2002. On her last full day as a candidate, Klobuchar canceled a rally after dozens of protesters took the stage for more than an hour to protest her role. Sharpton said in an interview he is not "anti-Amy Klobuchar," but he cited concerns about her prosecutorial tenure, including the Burrell case. He said the issue could compound criticism of Biden's record on criminal justice.
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