CBC Institute launches multimillion-dollar Black voter campaign as leaders call out Democratic Party failures
TheGrio...
The “SO VOTE” campaign will target young, rural and low-propensity Black voters in consequential races across the country.
The Congressional Black Caucus Institute has announced a multi-million-dollar campaign to mobilize Black voters ahead of the November midterm election. Launched on National Voter Registration Day, the “SO VOTE” campaign seeks to educate Black voters about this year’s elections and drive them to the polls through modern digital and traditional grassroots methods.
The effort is being spearheaded by CBC Institute founder and Chairman U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson, founder and co-chair U.S. Congressman Jim Clyburn, former U.S. Congresswoman and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Marcia Fudge, and former U.S. Congressman Cedric Richmond.
“In the last election, the numbers indicate that around 71-72% of the white vote turned out at the polls. Only 59% of the Black vote [turned out],” said Congressman Clyburn during a Monday press call unveiling the new campaign.
The dip in turnout among Black voters in the 2024 presidential election—despite a historic Black candidate, former Vice President Kamala Harris, at the top of the ticket—was a source of frustration for Black Democrats. As theGrio previously reported, an autopsy of the 2024 election released by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) confirmed what Black organizers had been saying on the ground: the party failed to sufficiently invest its $2 billion campaign budget in Black communities, despite Black voters often being praised as the party’s most critical, loyal voting bloc.
Clyburn said that the national Democratic Party that has been “relied upon to turn votes out have not been succeeding.”
When asked if the “SO VOTE” campaign is a direct response to the party’s failure to adequately invest in and mobilize Black voters, Clyburn told theGrio, “Absolutely.”
Richmond, who served as a senior advisor to the Biden and Harris presidential campaigns, told theGrio, “The Democratic Party is failing in this area,” adding, “We’re filling a hole that is absolutely needed.”
The former Louisiana congressman said the “SO VOTE” campaign, which will distribute funds targeting key congressional districts and races in the midterms, particularly across the South, is necessary because the party must have “significant and consistent investment” in Black and rural communities.
He explained, “You have to have consistent use of the businesses that are owned by people in these communities to communicate to them.”
The “SO VOTE” campaign will invest in what the CBC Institute considers to be consequential statewide races in Georgia and Mississippi, as well as key House races such as North Carolina-01, Ohio-09, Ohio-13, Pennsylvania-07, Pennsylvania-10, Alabama-2, Arizona-2, Indiana-1, Missouri-5, North Carolina-11, Nevada-4, South Carolina-1, Tennessee-5, Tennessee-9, Wisconsin-1, and Wisconsin-3.
The multi-million-dollar operation is also retooling ways to communicate with Black voters, particularly young and low-propensity voters.
“While these parties and candidates consistently and overwhelmingly rely on TV to get their message out, that is not the most effective way to talk to the people that we are focusing on,” said Richmond. “If there’s not a big investment into uninspired voters, low propensity voters, rural voters, then you’re going to get the result that you’ve been getting, and we know that if you engage them and you talk to them and message to them, that they will come out and they will exercise their right to vote.”
Critics of the national Democratic Party have pointed out that Black businesses, media platforms with direct connection to Black voters did not receive nearly enough investments. They say it reflects a persistent flaw within the party that takes Black voters for granted despite the fact that almost no Democrat can win some of the country’s most contested elections without their high turnout.
If successful at improving the participation rate of Black voters, Richmond told theGrio, “We would hope that candidates and parties will start to understand how to reach these uninspired voters and how to deploy the funding and the resources to maintain a consistent relationship with these voters over time.”
A CBC Institute staffer who provided insights on background told theGrio that the “SO VOTE” campaign will be relying on voices that targeted Black voters trust and deploying those individuals “at scale” through testing, DMs and closed ecosystems, or individual feeds, traditionally used by advertisers on social media platforms.
The campaign will also rely on social listening to determine what Black voters talk about in online spaces and let that inform the kind of the content and messaging that breaks through. If successful, the strategies deployed could become a blueprint for the next 2028 Democratic presidential nominee.
“We got the right message. We need to understand and speak the language of the voters we’re trying to reach,” the staffer told theGrio.