President Joe Biden is quoted in a television ad that says “transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time.”
“Actually Joe?” the ad’s speaker replies. “People using girls’ rooms is not legal rights,” according to the statement.
According to polls, Biden is losing support among some Black citizens, and some managers believe that using anti-transgender messaging will lessen his appeal among more traditionally non-white electors in cities like Philadelphia.
The television advertising from MAGA Inc., a PAC supporting Trump, are airing in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Harrisburg, with more purchases in predominantly Black areas in Georgia and Michigan through the end of the month.
Political consultant from Philadelphia, Mustafa Rashed, said of the ads, “It’s a classic wedge issue and it’s meant to be divisive.” “The goal here… it’s not to get African American voters to Trump. It’s to make them think maybe Biden’s doing something wicked and nefarious, which he isn’t.”
Biden is also criticized in the one-minute spot for preventing border security. It concludes with the statement, “President Trump will protect our daughters’ sports teams and stop the sexualization of our children.”
The purchase, which is costing about $380,000 across all three states for the month of March, revives earlier Republican attempts to use LGBTQ issues as a wedge to appeal to some more socially conservative Black voters.
Republicans had little success supporting transgender propaganda in the midterm elections of 2022. Polling indicates a wide support for LGBTQ rights, but there is a growing gap between transgender people who play women’s sports and those portrayed as right-wing attackers.
Rashed described the ads as offensive and an attempt to compare one marginalized group’s civil rights struggle to another’s when “there’s enough injustice to go around and there’s enough people fighting for injustice.”
In his joint addresses before Congress and working to improve transgender rights protections in education, travel, and healthcare, Biden, 81, has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights.
Republicans have previously used socially conservative measures to appeal to Black voters, including when they targeted Black churchgoers in states trying to legalize same-sex unions. The debate raged at the forefront of the campaign in the presidential election of 2004 as President George W. Bush, who favored a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and Democratic nominee John Kerry, who did not.
Trump has made racist remarks on the campaign trail in recent months, saying that he believes Black voters are affected by his mugshot and criminal indictments. Democrats are struggling to hold onto a historically trustworthy base despite his rhetoric. Support for Democrats is at its lowest level in more than 60 years, according to a recent analysis of nonwhite voters’ preferences.
In his analysis of polling data, John Burn-Murdoch, the head of the Financial Times, wrote that “Black Americans who lived through the civil rights era still support the party at very high levels, but younger generations are reversing.”
The Trump campaign launched a nationwide Black Voters for Trump campaign in 2020, with offices in Philadelphia and other cities. Trump did increase his support among Black voters in 2016, but Biden overwhelmingly won the majority of the voting bloc. Most polls now indicate a decline in Biden among voters of color, particularly Black men. In a tight election, dissuading even a small number of voters from voting for Biden, or shifting those voters toward Trump, could make a difference.
How effective the advertisements might be is unknown. This far from November, campaigns and outside groups are often testing different messages.
There is some research that suggests it might have a negative impact. According to a recent poll from the LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD, 50% of registered and likely voters surveyed said they would oppose a candidate who “speaks frequently about restricting access to healthcare and participation in sports for transgender youth.” Overseas research has revealed that queer youth’s mental health has been severely affected by anti-transgender legislation.
Trump has promised to end transgender rights. He has stated that if elected, he would enact laws that only recognize two genders, exclude transgender women and girls, and prohibit transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams. He has stated that he would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
“Only President Trump will secure the border and protect girls’ sports,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for MAGA Inc., the group behind the radio ads.
Border security and inflation are two topics Calvin Tucker, who chairs the Black Republican caucus for the Pennsylvania GOP, said. He claimed that because he had spoken with Black people all over the country, transgender issues have not “resonated.”
Tucker, however, said there is a definite chance for Trump among state black voters. He’s already canvassing as part of the campaign’s national “Black MAGA Movement,” he said.
“What I always say, we have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests,” Tucker said. “I speak to people who voted for Biden in 2020 and don’t think his policies serve
