Trump campaign mixes up Detroit pastors as it works to woo Black voters
A Detroit pastor said Wednesday he is offended that former President Donald Trump’s campaign announced he would participate in a Republican Black voter outreach event after confusing him with another local pastor.
Bishop Charles H. Ellis III told BridgeDetroit he is a lifelong Democrat who supports presidential nominee Kamala Harris and has encouraged his congregation at Greater Grace Temple to turn out in the November election.
“I don’t know how they got my name,” Ellis said of the Trump campaign. “We know the Democratic influence of Detroit. My focus has always been on voter registration and turning out the vote.”
The Trump campaign this week mistakenly said Ellis would participate in a Thursday roundtable with Black faith leaders in Detroit. His church, however, recently hosted a mobilization event for women voters supporting Harris.
A Trump campaign spokesperson told BridgeDetroit the press announcement mistakenly named Ellis instead of Apostle Ellis Smith, founder of Jubilee City Church in Redford Township.
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Gina Barr, director of Black engagement for the Trump campaign, said she was responsible for the mistake, which she attributed to stress related to the “unfathomable” death of her mother earlier this week.
“In keeping with her tenacious spirit, while simultaneously attempting to plan her unexpected home-going, I elected to remain committed to President Trump and my family’s longtime support of the Detroit evangelical community and erroneously misspelled the name of local Detroit pastor and roundtable participant,” Barr said in a statement. “The burden of grief is not a mortal sin and something all pastors and political parties should understand and support.”
Confirmed attendees for the Trump campaign event include Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers, Michigan GOP Chairman Pete Hoekstra and the Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, senior pastor of 180 Church. Smith, who the campaign now says will attend the event instead of Ellis, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The event is the latest effort by the Trump campaign to woo voters in Detroit, a majority Black city and major source of Democratic votes in Michigan. Turnout in Detroit is likely to have a major impact on whether Trump is able to win the state after pulling off a tight 10,704-vote victory in 2016 before losing to President Joe Biden by 154,188 votes in 2020.
Democrats vastly outnumber Republican voters in Detroit, but Trump collected more votes from the city than past GOP candidates. He earned 3% of the Detroit vote in 2016, gathering 7,682 votes, and 5% of the vote in 2020 with 12,899 votes.
Democratic votes in Detroit declined since former President Barack Obama’s first term in 2008, dropping from 324,895 to 281,743 in 2012, then dipping to 234,871 in 2016. President Joe Biden and Harris earned 240,936 votes in 2020.
Sewell, a Detroit pastor expected at Thursday’s event, hosted Trump for a similar roundtable event at his westside church in July and has since become a rising conservative influencer. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in July and at “Blexit” events encouraging Black voters to break with Democrats in various battleground states.
Trump has successfully courted other Black figures to support him. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick endorsed Trump and was featured in recent Republican radio advertisements. Trump in 2021 commuted Kilpatrick’s 28-year prison sentence after roughly six years following conviction on 24 felonies stemming from his time in office.
Trump has returned to Michigan several times in recent months, including a Sept. 17 rally in Flint, and is set to visit Walker and Warren on Friday. The Republican nominee hasn’t held any major rallies in Detroit, instead opting for the July roundtable and attending a National Guard ceremony in August.
Ellis said he’s not noticed the impact of local efforts by Trump and allies efforts to court Black voters, particularly young men.
“I have not seen any big movement,” Ellis said. “I’m sure there are people out there and some ministers out there. I have not seen any kind of swell. We’re saying to those young men, ‘This is historic. We can’t go backward.’”
Far from a Trump supporter, as the campaign had suggested, Ellis argued the former president is a threat to democracy. The pastor noted he was a first-time poll worker at Detroit’s absentee counting board in 2020 when Trump supporters swarmed the building and attempted to interfere with the counting of absentee ballots.
That was a sign of things to come, according to Ellis, who pointed to Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol and continued claims that Detroit was “rigged” against Trump.
“The most important issue is democracy,” Ellis said. “I don’t know how many January 6 (incidents) this country can take. If that didn’t scare everybody who has been cheated out of voting, who has been denied the right to vote, I don’t know where your mind is.”
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