Dan Cox’s HBCU Visit Falls Flat As MAGA Republican Woos ‘Nearly Empty’ Morgan State Crowd

Republican Dan Cox greets his supporters on July 19, 2022, at his gubernatorial primary victory party in Emmitsburg, Maryland. | Source: Baltimore Sun / Getty

It’s election season and that means you’re eventually going to see your fair share of white Republican political candidates touring Black churches and HBCUs in a flaccid attempt to earn “Black friend” credibility by appealing to the African American community. It’s always a sort of reverse-shuck n’ jive that would be at least mildly amusing if it weren’t so dubious. (They also tend to be so damn transparent that they’re just too much of a walking, breathing insult to our Black intelligence for us to think there’s anything funny about it.)

Meet Maryland’s Republican nominee for governor, Del. Dan Cox.

According to the Washington Post, Cox paid a visit to Morgan State University, Maryland’s largest historically Black university, on Tuesday. The Post described the school’s student center as being “nearly empty,” which might lead one to believe that Black HBCU students were generally disinterested in what the Donald Trump-endorsed guber-MAGA-natorial candidate had to say. Cox hit the MSU stage to reverse-tap-dance anyway.

Republican candidate for Governor- Dan Cox- participates in forum at Morgan State University #wbal pic.twitter.com/O8mfaBwPeA

— Kim Dacey WBAL (@kimdaceywbal) September 28, 2022

From the Post:

With six weeks before Election Day, the hour-long forum, hosted by the Morgan State Spokesman, the university’s student news site, offered Cox what he described as a “historic” opportunity to make a pitch to young Black voters on their own turf.

Cox, who was 22 points behind his Democratic opponent, Wes Moore, in a recent Goucher College poll, opened the forum by accusing Moore of showing “disrespect” to the university by declining its invitation to participate in the event.

Moore spent Wednesday morning launching a tour of the state’s historically Black colleges and universities with a visit to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in rural Maryland.

“I’m asking for your vote,” Cox, a backbench freshman state legislator, told the audience at Morgan. “This is your moment to put power back in the people’s hands. Give me a chance.”

So, to put all of that another way: Cox hopped up on the MSU stage, performed a quick diss track against his poll-leading Black opponent, Wes Moore—who was minding his Black business and visiting other Black colleges at the time—and then he tried his very hardest to refrain from tossing his white fist in the air while shouting, “Power to the people!”

“Cox was asked about a dozen questions on abortion access, election integrity, critical race theory and gender identity, the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and on funding for HBCUs. Cox, who has described the 2020 presidential election as ‘stolen,’ would not commit to accepting the results of his own contest in November,” the Post’s report added.

But, apparently, Cox’s strategy for this forum was to ignore just about every question he was asked by the few Black students who bothered to show up to his I-Like-Good-Times-Too-a-thon, and instead, he continued to spread his rust-orange overseer’s “stop the steal” propaganda.

“I believe very firmly in making sure that our system works. I don’t believe in changing the rules midstream,” he said. “I don’t believe in making a system that creates question. I don’t believe in losing our chain of custody with mail-in ballots. I don’t believe in failure to assert and verify that it’s actually voters voting.”

For the record: None of what Cox said actually ever happened. Just because Republicans keep promoting a baseless (and thoroughly disproven) narrative about massive voter fraud, Democrats cheating through mail-in ballots and Walking Dead extras rising from the grave to vote blue doesn’t mean the current voting system “creates question,” it just means propa-MAGA-ganda spreads as easy as peanut butter on toast.

More from the Post:

He denied “co-hosting” buses transporting Trump supporters to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that preceded the attack on the Capitol, even after a student journalist read from a tweet he posted with a hashtag StoptheSteal. Instead, he insisted that he bought tickets only for himself and seven of his children.

When asked how he reconciles believing people should not have to take a coronavirus vaccine with believing women should not be able to choose abortion, Cox tried to pivot:

“Right now the issue before us is not so much these moral debates that we’ve had so long, which everyone knows I’m pro-life; the issue is whether or not we can put food on our children’s tables and have an opportunity here in Maryland,” he said.

Asked whether he supports public universities providing birth control to students, Cox said “I don’t believe in government handouts … not something forced upon another taxpayer to pay for.”

So, to put all of that another way: Cox side-stepped all of the issues his audience wanted to discuss and instead, he decided to tell Black people in a Black space what subject matter they should be prioritizing for the day’s meeting. They asked him about women’s reproductive rights, public health, HBCU funding and his involvement in the Jan. 6 MAGA mow-down at the U.S. Capitol, and Cox basically responded, “What you poors should be worried about is getting off your Black a***** and getting a job instead of holding your well-moisturized hands out for welfare. I mean, we need to hold on to that food stamp money. What if Brett Favre moves to Baltimore?”

OK, he didn’t say all that, but the point is: Don’t be the white guy going into a Black space to tell Black people what’s what while ignoring their actual concerns. These aren’t Black pastors and parishioners, sir. Invoking faith and pro-life-ness to appeal to the conservative aspects of the Black community is not going to work on a bunch of Black gen-Z college students. Plus, Cox is an anti-CRT conservative trying to appeal to Black academia.

Like—bro, just no.

Watch the forum for yourself below.

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