CLEVELAND _ It's no secret that Republicans are struggling to find support among black voters. An NBC/Marist poll this month showed the party's nominee, Donald J. Trump, getting 0 percent of the black vote in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Which means Calvin Tucker, the lone African-American in Pennsylvania's Republican delegation, is statistically within the margin of error for not existing.
"Democrats are going to flaunt as many minorities as they can" at their convention, said the Philadelphia native. "For every African-American that shows up here, there will be 20 in Philadelphia" for the Democratic convention.
The real-world ratio is hardly much better. Last year, a Pew Research Center study found that African-Americans are eight times more likely to be Democrats, who also command 2-to-1 margins of Asians and a narrower majority of Hispanics. Pew also found that one-third of eligible voters in November would be non-white _ the largest share in history.
Republicans are seeking to stem the tide. African-American speakers in the convention's first two nights include Darryl Glenn, a candidate for U.S. Senate; Ben Carson, a former presidential rival; and Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. When Clarke, a vocal critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, opened his Monday speech saying "I would like to make something very clear: Blue lives matter in America," it drew a standing ovation inside the arena.
The sentiment may have been less convincing outside it.
"Saying all lives matter or blue lives matter _ we already know that," said Damon Young, a Pittsburgh resident whose writing on race and culture has appeared in national magazines and his Very Smart Brothas blog. "All (the movement) is saying is black lives matter, too. ... This isn't an attempt to start a race war, it's an attempt to end it.
"I won't say the people put in those positions are disingenuous," Young said of the speakers. "You can be a person of color and be conservative. The disingenuousness comes when you scour the earth to find these people and then say, 'Look at us clapping for this black man.' "
Tucker said he supports the GOP because its values are "are where African-Americans are," but there are pragmatic considerations too. "If we're going to get a yield or return for what we put out, we need to be on both sides of the aisle."
Tucker said he hadn't spoken with Trump about his own urban vision, but he said surrogates "told me Mr. Trump will have a policy. He's a developer and that can have a long-term effect."
Tucker acknowledged that some Republican wounds were self-inflicted. Iowa Congressman Steve King stirred up a media firestorm this week, for example, by suggesting that Europeans and Americans had contributed more to civilization than "any other subgroup of people."
"Some people you can't do anything about," said Tucker. "And I don't stay up overnight worrying about rhetoric."
In any case, moving black voters in the GOP column "is going to take more than imagery on TV," said veteran Franklin & Marshall College pollster Terry Madonna. "Donald Trump has to figure out a way to convince African-Americans that voting for him is in their interests."
Turning around the Hispanic vote would present a similar challenge in the best of circumstances, Madonna said. As it is, "Trump has made these statements" _ such as his campaign promise to wall off the Mexican border and his assertion that a judge handling a lawsuit of his couldn't be fair because of his Mexican ancestry.
But Madonna said Trump needed those votes less than Democrat Hillary Clinton. While Clinton could expect 90 percent of the black vote, he said, "it really will depend on how many people she turns out on Election Day."
African-Americans have some reason to be wary of Clinton, including the role her husband, Bill Clinton, played in passing a tough anti-crime bill that helped drive up incarceration rates. Young acknowledged his own ambivalence about her.
"I think the best way for her to get people to the polls," he said, "is to double down on how much of a disaster it would be if Donald Trump was president."
