Republicans open Black center in Jacksonville as part of national outreach to minority voters

Days after completing a years-long takeover of Jacksonville’s countywide elected offices, Republicans turned their attention to reaching a group that’s almost universally estranged from them: African Americans.

The Black American Community Center that opened Friday in a Westside strip mall is part of a Republican National Committee campaign to grow its reach by being present in Black communities.

“Every single person we talk to, every conversation, will make a difference,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel told a few dozen party faithful inside a storefront at 5205 Normandy Blvd. between a beauty supply shop and a nail supply business.

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Fewer than 4% of Duval County’s 183,712 Black voters were Republicans when elections workers logged demographic data in January.

“For so many years, the Republican Party hasn’t engaged the Black community the way I think they should,” City Council President Sam Newby, a Black Republican, told the crowd.

McDaniel has made changing that a priority, championing a multimillion-dollar GOP minority outreach effort that since last year has opened more than 20 minority-focused community centers nationwide. Others are planned before the fall mid-term elections.

President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign success in Duval County, the first time a Democrat had carried the county since 1976, helped demonstrate to the GOP the need to connect with Blacks who make up about 30 percent of Jacksonville’s population.

The party opened a Hispanic center last year in Doral in Miami-Dade County and has Black centers in Cleveland and outside Atlanta, but Jacksonville is the GOP’s first Black center in Florida.

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Audiences for other centers have ranged from Asian/Pacific Islanders in another Atlanta suburb to Native Americans in North Carolina and Indian Americans in Dallas.

Besides campaign activities, some sites have been used for events like financial literacy seminars, immigration law sessions and a lunar New Year celebration, which Republicans hope help the centers connect with communities who aren’t that interested in discussing GOP position statements.

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But the party’s ideas can be as good for Blacks as for anyone else, said newly elected City Council member Nick Howland, who beat Democrat Tracye Polson in Tuesday’s runoff election for the at-large seat that Tommy Hazouri, a career Democrat, held until his death in September.

Priorities like increasing public safety, creating jobs, improving schools and investing in all neighborhoods can help everyone, Howland said.

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The center will be a tool to share Republican ideas, said Terrance Freeman, City Council vice president and also a Black Republican.

“This center is going to create a safe place … to come in and have a conversation,” Freeman told people gathered there.

Not that everyone was persuaded by the conversations opening night, however.

“This was expected,” Neymir Johnson, 26, said of the messages in the GOP outreach event, which he said he happened upon while walking past the storefront. After listening at length, he said the GOP’s only interest was in getting votes, not helping Black people, but he added the Democratic Party wasn’t really interested in much more.

He said he wasn’t interested at all in becoming a Republican, but the event let him talk with “a different demographic.”