WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump boasted that 100 black pastors were endorsing him in early December — though about half that number attended the meeting and not one publicly backed his presidential bid. Then Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) walked the streets of inner city Baltimore on Tuesday with a group of local black pastors, who said they were impressed with his policies on poverty and police reform, but similarly held back on an official endorsement. The campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) threw its support on Wednesday behind a group of conservative black pastors pushing a plan to “rescue” communities of color from “sexual immorality.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) became the latest to court the support of black clergy members, emphasizing his efforts to demilitarize the police, help ex-felons find work, and tackle the problem of mass incarceration. The senator-turned-presidential candidate talked about what he learned from The New Jim Crow — a seminal text of the Black Lives Matter movement — and criticized the members of his party who are only focused on “ginning up anger.”
As the Black Lives Matter movement becomes an influential force in the 2016 election, candidates are increasingly seeking support from the black church, which has long shaped American social movements but has only recently stepped into the political spotlight. Both parties acknowledge they must win over voters of color to win the White House, and Republicans worry that white nationalist support for current party frontrunner Donald Trump may alienate otherwise conservative people of color.
Democrats take the black vote for granted and Republicans don’t care at all.
“Like I always say, Democrats take the black vote for granted and Republicans don’t care at all,” Paul told about 15 black and Latino pastors crowded around a table in a small, unmarked, brick house on Capitol Hill. “To be honest, the Republican Party has a long way to go with the African American community. But I’m convinced the Republican Party will not survive until it’s a more diverse party.”
Though none of them offered public endorsements, the pastors appeared to enthusiastically receive Paul’s message.
“Senator Paul is the only Republican candidate who has spoken substantively and eloquently from the beginning regarding the issues of those within our community,” said Reverend Dean Nelson with the Virginia Christian Alliance, who says he has met with seven candidates running for president. “I’m hoping other Republicans will see this and take it seriously and begin discussing urban issues before October of 2016.”
“The Senator has long been a champion for the African American community, on issues near and dear to our heart,” added Reverend Jamal Bryant of the Empowerment Temple AME in Baltimore, Maryland. “This cycle is going to be a transitional one for the African American electorate. We will not vote along traditional party lines or around a personality, but around policy, and a lot of the policies Senator Rand represents align with a lot of the pain and the concerns of those within the African American community.”
Yet Paul is in some ways also an unlikely champion for black pastors, and the language he used in Wednesday’s meeting differed starkly from the tone he has often taken on the campaign trail and on conservative radio shows.
Speaking of the protests and unrest sparked by police killings in Baltimore, Chicago, Ferguson and elsewhere, Paul told the pastors: “With these kinds of injustices, you can understand why people are unhappy. There’s no excuse for violence but you can see why people are protesting and marching in the streets, when you see Eric Gardner’s death in New York or you see what happened to Kalief Browder.”
For some of us who have never seen the unfairness side of the justice system, there are some who have never seen fairness.
“For some of us who have never seen the unfairness side of the justice system, there are some who have never seen fairness,” Paul continued. “They think the whole system is rigged. And there’s a lot of evidence, when you look at the war on drugs, that the people serving all the time are disproportionately black or brown and all poor. We have two sets of justice in our country: for those who have means and for those who don’t. I’ve learned a lot about that in the last couple years and it’s my goal to try to fix it.”
Yet back in April, as hundreds took to the streets of Baltimore to protest the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, Paul joked to radio host Laura Ingraham, “I came through the train on Baltimore last night. I’m glad the train didn’t stop.” He went on to say that the true cause of the protests was “the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers” and the lack of a “moral code in our society,” and offered, “police have to do what they have to do.”
A few months earlier, when campaigning in Charleston, South Carolina as the community was still reeling in the wake of police shooting 50-year-old unarmed Walter Scott, Paul did not address the incident at all except to say that “98, 99 percent of police are are doing their job on a day-to-day basis and aren’t doing things like this.”
Paul has also slammed the Black Lives Matter movement, suggesting they change their name to “Innocent Lives Matter,” and has long opposed basic civil rights laws that require businesses to treat customers equally regardless of race.
And while Paul told the black clergy members Wednesday that he sympathizes with their concerns about domestic surveillance — noting that the U.S. government has a history of spying on civil rights leaders — he recently told radio host Dave Price that intelligence agencies like the NSA “spend more time on people who speak Arabic.”
Yet Paul’s senior campaign adviser Elroy Sailor insisted in the meeting Wednesday, before Paul arrived, that the candidate became a changed man when it comes to race following his widely mocked speech at Howard University in 2013, where he decided to explain basic American history to students at the elite historically black college.
“He went to Howard and he didn’t do so well,” said Sailor. “He tried to give a history lesson.”
“Maybe he should have called up a few black folks before going,” former RNC Chair Michael Steele laughed.
Steele and Sailor then tried to convince the gathered clergy members that Paul had learned his lesson, done his research, and is now the only GOP candidate reaching out to communities of color and taking their concerns to heart.
Calling him a “transformational leader,” Sailor asked: “What candidate has been to inner city Detroit, talking to people unscripted? Who else has been to Atlanta, to Baltimore, to Chicago? Who went to a black barbershop in Iowa? I can’t name another Republican in this race who has done that.”
Though the pastors — whose political views ran the gamut from progressive to conservative — closed the meeting by laying hands on Paul and praying for his health and his campaign, they emphasized that they would continue meeting with 2016 candidates before making an endorsement.
Bishop Harry Jackson of the Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, Maryland, who also attended a Wednesday’s event with Ted Cruz’s staff meeting, told reporters he believes “the black vote is going to be in play in this election.”
“This is kind of us blowing a trumpet and saying, it’s a new day,” he said. “Don’t ignore the black vote. Don’t ignore the black clergy.”
The meeting’s sole Latino member, Bishop Angel Núñez of the Bilingual Christian Church in Baltimore, Maryland, agreed. “We have determined we are not going to be just token Democrats, or even Republicans,” he said. “We are standing for policies that will benefit our communities. We’re not going to rubber stamp one party or the other.”