This Trump PAC is trying to appeal to Black voters in Philly with anti-transgender messaging

A radio spot airing in Philadelphia this month quotes President Joe Biden saying that “the civil rights issue of our time is transgender equality.”

“Really, Joe?” the ad’s narrator replies. “Men competing against girls and men using girls’ bathrooms is not civil rights.”

Biden is losing support among some Black voters, polls show, and some strategists see anti-transgender messaging as a way to further dampen his appeal among more conservative voters of color in cities such as Philadelphia.

The radio ads from MAGA Inc., a super PAC backing former President Donald Trump, are airing in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, and Harrisburg, with additional air time purchased in predominantly Black cities in Georgia and Michigan through the end of the month.

“It’s a classic wedge issue and it’s meant to be divisive,” Philadelphia-based political consultant Mustafa Rashed said of the ads. “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.”

The one-minute spot also blasts Biden for failing to secure the border. It ends saying, “President Trump will protect our daughters’ sports teams and stop the sexualization of our children.”

The buy — about $380,000 across all three states for the month of March — recalls past Republican attempts to use LGBTQ issues as a wedge to appeal to some more socially conservative Black voters.

Republicans had minimal success embracing anti-transgender messaging in the 2022 midterms. Polling shows broad support for LGBTQ rights but a divide in support for transgender issues such as gender-neutral restrooms, gender-affirming treatment, and transgender athletes playing women’s sports has developed as right-wing attacks have escalated.

Rashed called the ads offensive and an attempt to peg the civil rights struggle of one marginalized group against another’s, when “there’s enough injustice to go around and there’s enough people fighting for injustice.”

Biden, 81, has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights, directly speaking to transgender youth in his joint addresses before Congress and working to strengthen civil rights protections for transgender people in education, travel, and health care.

Republicans have used socially conservative policies to appeal to Black voters before, including in the early 2000s, as the party targeted Black churchgoers in states trying to legalize same-sex marriage. In the 2004 presidential election, the differing positions of President George W. Bush, who supported a constitutional ban on gay marriage, and Democratic nominee John Kerry, who did not, became an issue at the forefront of the campaign.

Trump has made racist comments on the campaign trail in recent months, saying he thinks Black voters relate to his mug shot and his criminal indictments. But despite his rhetoric, Democrats are struggling to hold onto a historically reliable base. A recent analysis on the preferences of voters of color found support among those communities for Democrats is at its lowest in more than 60 years.

“Black Americans who lived through the civil rights era still support the party at very high levels, but younger generations are wavering,” Financial Times chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch wrote in his analysis of polling data.

In 2020 the Trump campaign launched a national Black Voters for Trump campaign, with headquarters in Philadelphia and other cities. Trump did increase his support with Black voters compared with 2016, but Biden overwhelmingly won the voting bloc. Now most polling shows a slide for 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.

It’s unclear how effective the ads could be. This far from November, campaigns and outside groups are often testing different messages.

There is some research indicating it could backfire. A recent poll from the LGBTQ advocacy nonprofit GLAAD found that 50% of registered and likely voters surveyed said they’d oppose a candidate “who speaks frequently about restricting access to health care and participation in sports for transgender youth.” There is overwhelming research that shows anti-transgender legislation has taken a severe toll on the mental health of queer youth.

State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D., Philadelphia), the first LGBTQ person of color elected to Pennsylvania’s General Assembly, criticized the messaging in the ads.

“Donald Trump is running a campaign rooted in hate and division, and Pennsylvanians don’t want a president who is more focused dividing us than delivering for us,” said Kenyatta, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2020 when Biden was nominated.

Trump has promised a war on transgender rights. He has said that if elected he would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender minors, pass federal laws that recognize only two genders — male and female — and bar transgender women and girls from competing on female sports teams.

“Only President Trump will secure the border and protect girls’ sports,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesperson for MAGA Inc., the group behind the radio ads.

Calvin Tucker, who chairs the Black Republican caucus for the Pennsylvania GOP, said the issues that he hears about most from Black voters are border security and inflation. He said transgender issues have not “resonated as I have talked to Black folks across this commonwealth.”

But Tucker said he sees a definite opening for Trump among Black voters in the state. 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 they don’t see his policies as benefiting their interests.”