Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is launching a “Souls to the Polls” effort over the weekend as election day nears battleground black churches, a campaign official told ABC News.
With less than 30 days to go before Election Day, the campaign’s diverse efforts will include Harris himself visiting black churches in the battlegrounds. The get-out-the-vote program also comes with the creation of a faith advisory board, made up of 10 prominent faith leaders — including Harris’ pastor, Dr. Amos C. Brown III, who leads Third Baptist Church in San Francisco. — which will include black churches across the country.
In addition to Brown, the campaign said the commission includes faith leaders from across the country, who are participating in their personal capacity, including: Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, the 132nd elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, the 117th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; Dr. Frederick D. Haynes III, senior pastor of Friendship-West Baptist Church in Dallas; and the Rev. Matthew Lawrence Watley, founder and senior pastor of Kingdom Fellowship AME Church in Calverton, Maryland.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the Baptist National Convention on September 8, 2022 in Houston.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images, FILE
The push will begin Sunday with a national appeal, gospel performances, faith leaders and elected officials, the campaign said.
The committee said in a statement that they are endorsing Harris, in part, “because he is the only candidate who has consistently been a friend and advocate for the Black Church and faith communities across the country.”
At the 2022 Baptist National Convention in Houston, Harris, who sang in her church choir as a child, said growing up she “learned in the Bible many teachings about the constant tension between darkness and light.”
“And in those moments I learned how important it is to recognize the power of faith,” he added.
Vice President Kamala Harris (C) speaks with faith leaders, including the Rev. Dr. Amos Brown (R), about reproductive health care during a Los Angeles County Federation of Labor panel discussion on the sidelines of the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, June. 6 of 2022
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images, FILE
The vice president said that he often turns to his faith.
“In times of uncertainty and confusion, when the way is not clear, it is faith that guides us forward – faith in what we often cannot see is what we know to be true,” Harris told the African Methodist Episcopal Women’s Missionary Convention last year. Orlando.
On the day President Joe Biden dropped out of the race for re-election in July, Harris said he made more than 100 calls to work to drum up support for the Democratic nomination, including one of those calls to Brown.
“I had to talk to God, you know, and pray,” Harris said Tuesday on ABC’s “The View” about making one of his first calls to Brown.
Former President Donald Trump has vowed to protect religious freedoms in an effort to appeal to evangelicals. The former president has also praised his Christianity.
Former President and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on stage after speaking at Turning Point Action’s “The Believers Summit” on July 26, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Fla.
Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images, FIle
In July, Trump spoke to a crowd of conservative Christians Turning Point Action Faith Summit in West Palm Beach where he reiterated that the power of prayer and the grace of Almighty God saved his life in the Butler, Pennsylvania terrorist attack.
“We want to thank all the believers in this room for your prayers and your tremendous support. I really appreciated it. Something was working, we know, something was working,” Trump said. “I stand before you tonight because of the power of prayer and the grace of Almighty God.”
The Black Church has played an important role in the civil rights and political movements, and has often led, and for generations promoted, activism in the United States, including the fight for voting rights and the fight against Jim Crow.
The church’s political influence is something Harris has publicly acknowledged and relied on.
At the 2023 conference in Orlando, Harris called on attendees to “clear the way forward.”
“And while we do, let us fight with optimism, faith and hope,” he said. “As the history of our nation and the history of this church tells us: when we fight, we win.”
Harris’ new “Souls to the Polls” effort has seen black support for Democrats soften in recent years.
A September Fox News poll 29% of black respondents said they would vote for Trump over Harris, a double-digit jump from the 12% who said they would in the 2020 election. ABC News exit poll.
On Thursday, while visiting a Democratic campaign office in Pittsburgh, Former President Barack Obama said “Based on the reports I’m getting from campaigns and communities … we still don’t have the same kind of energy and participation that we saw in all of our neighborhoods and communities that we saw when I ran,” among black voters, especially black men. .
Obama rebuked black men for making “excuses” not to vote for Harris, saying some of it may be based on misogyny, saying it was “not acceptable.”
