Sept. 3, 2024, 5:34 p.m.
CHICAGO—Along a parade of sun-kissed, faded storefronts on the city’s South Side stands a barbershop that was host to an unexpected political guest last year.
“Now your mayor boasts to the country that ‘we’re a sanctuary,’” venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy said during his stop at 3rd Phase Barbershop in May last year, berating progressive Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Democratic policies on the border. “If somebody else wants to say that they’re a ‘sanctuary city,’ and then people actually send them, I think it’s your mayor that bears accountability.”
That message seemed to resonate with Ron Fields, the Black co-owner of the shop who cut Ramaswamy’s hair during his visit.
“People should be careful as to not looking to the government for their values, their beliefs,” Fields told National Journal outside his barbershop on Aug. 22—the final day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center just west of the city center. A few miles south at Fields’s shop, there were no signs of the confab in the predominantly Black neighborhood where former first lady Michelle Obama grew up and former President Obama launched his political career.
Former President Trump and his fellow Republicans like Ramaswamy have been courting Black voters like Fields throughout this election cycle, hoping to convert a group that traditionally votes Democratic by capitalizing on their cynicism toward the government. Multiple New York Times-Siena College polls over the last couple of months show the former president garnering more than 20 percent of support among Black voters, far higher than the 8 percent he received among this group in 2020, per the Pew Research Center.
This is unlikely to make Illinois—where Democrats have won by double digits in every presidential election since 1988—a red state, but it could twist the outcome in swing states with large Black populations, like Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia.
Fields was reflective of the opening Republicans may have with Black voters.
“They need to understand the natural fruit of what’s going on now,” Fields said as customers waited for their haircuts on wooden pews and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” played in the background. He added that it will take multiple election cycles for Republicans to convince large swaths of Black voters to change their allegiances.
Scenes from Chicago's South Side during the Democratic National Convention. Aug. 22, 2024 (Zac Weisz)
Zac Weisz
Fields berated the Democratic Party on a plethora of issues, arguing that they put others before Black voters, that they have been “reckless” with government spending, and that President Biden only suspended his reelection bid to “pacify” Democratic voters. He even panned the party over its support for abortion access.
“I personally do not agree with it. My personal issue is I don’t want to be taxed for it,” Fields said.
Fields wasn’t on board with every aspect of the Republican platform. He believes that the party needs to consider backing reparations, something they resolutely opposed in the summer of 2020 during the collective introspection about racial inequalities following the murder of George Floyd. Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to support the idea back in her 2020 presidential campaign, but her position now is unclear.
Though there could be an opening for Trump among Black voters, his efforts haven’t always gone to plan. He drew backlash from his own party after questioning Harris’s background at a National Association of Black Journalists event that also took place in the Windy City. In February, the former president suggested his indictments would make him more relatable to Black voters. Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, one of five Black Republicans in Congress and a top campaign surrogate for Trump, also said that the Jim Crow era had some benefits for Black Americans.
This hasn’t pierced Republicans’ optimism about wooing Black voters.
“Trump will get more African American voters than any Republican since Ronald Reagan,” Arkansas GOP delegate Iverson Jackson told National Journal during the Republican National Convention in July, a time when the GOP was particularly bullish about Trump’s chances of regaining the White House.
“Vice President Harris’ coronation completely reset this race because she was able to consolidate the Democrats' most important constituency—Black voters,” Republican pollster Ryan Tyson reportedly wrote in a recent strategy memo for a conservative group that is attempting to discourage Black Americans from voting for Trump.
Fields believes some Black voters remain open to Trump.
“There’s a lot of people [on the South Side] saying they’re voting for Kamala, but there’s also a lot of people saying they’re voting Republican,” he said.
Fields’s theory undercuts how Democratic strategists view the race. When Biden was still the nominee, they were just worried that Black voters would stay at home rather than show up to the polls on Election Day. Harris, the first Black female nominee of a major party, appears to have allayed those concerns altogether since succeeding the president, as enthusiasm has surged among Black Democrats.
Two days before Harris officially accepted the nomination, the South Side’s most famous daughter, Michelle Obama, attempted to capitalize on that momentum and ensure that other Black voters didn’t follow Fields’s path. Her convention address attempted to reinforce the notion that Democrats are the party for Black voters, as she delivered a series of searing broadsides against Trump.
“Who’s gonna tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs?’” the former first lady curled.
Back downtown, Fields seemed unswayed. He said his vote “definitely will not be Kamala, or whoever they put up.”
