Within 24 hours of Republican presidential frontrunner Dr. Ben Carson’s business manager Armstrong Williams’ declaration to Breitbart News Daily that the retired neurosurgeon’s campaign is a “revolution,” a new Quinnipiac poll showed Carson holding a 10-point lead with women over Hillary Clinton, and Carson’s new rap radio ad was scheduled to hit the airwaves.
The Carson campaign’s 60-second urban radio spot, called “Freedom,” will be heard in eight major markets–Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Detroit, Birmingham, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas–starting Friday.
The $150,000 radio ad blitz is targeted toward young black voters.
“America became a great nation early on not because it was flooded with politicians but because it was flooded with people who understood the value of personal responsibility, hard work, innovation and that’s what will get us on the right track now,” Dr. Carson says over rapper Aspiring Mogul’s lyrics. “I’m very hopeful that I’m not the only one that’s willing to pick up the baton to freedom,” Carson continues. “Because freedom is not free and we must fight for it every day. Every one of us must fight for us because we are fighting for our children and the next generation.”
Clinton’s camp faces an uphill battle to keep Obama’s black voter collision intact. The former secretary of state’s support among black voters “plunged,” according to The Washington Post, in a Suffolk University/USA Today national poll released last month. Carson’s campaign wants to take advantage of this vulnerability.
“Reaching them on a level they appreciate and follow and see if we can attract their consciousness about the election,” said Carson campaign spokesman Doug Watts to ABC News. “They need to get involved and express their voice through their vote.”
For more than eleven presidential elections, the Democratic party has benefited greatly by winning a bulk of the black vote. But that tide could turn.
Dr. Carson received 19 percent of black voter support in the new national poll from Quinnipiac University–that’s more than any other Republican matched up with Clinton.