Republicans can preserve and build on their 2024 gains with Black voters even without President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket in the 2026 midterms, according to T.W. Shannon, the former chair of Black Voices for Trump and now the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in Oklahoma.
Shannon, a former Oklahoma House speaker who served in the second Trump administration, made the case in an interview on the sidelines of the first-ever GOP midterm convention in Dallas. He pointed to the party's economic message and what he described as the Democratic Party's leftward shift as the two forces that will keep minority voters moving toward the GOP.
Trump won 16 percent of the Black vote in the 2024 presidential election, according to a Fox News Voter Analysis, nearly double his share four years earlier. Shannon said that improvement reflects a deeper realignment. «It's because Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party back into the working party,» he said. «You see Democrats competing for the Black vote now. Something that you used to not see at all. They didn't have to, they just took it for granted.»
Shannon cited job creation and falling crime rates during the second Trump administration as policies that directly benefit Black communities. He also took aim at Democratic candidates backed by or aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, arguing that their platform — which he characterized as raising taxes, doing away with the Senate, and disbanding the police — is out of step with Black voters. «These are not things that are well received in the Black community,» he said.
The Democratic National Committee rejected that assessment. A DNC spokesperson told Fox News Digital that Black Americans will reject what the spokesperson called Trump's «billionaires-first, cost-raising agenda» at the ballot box in November and elect Democrats focused on lowering costs for working families. The spokesperson added that the DNC is investing resources to reach, register, and mobilize Black voters nationwide, and accused the Trump administration of attacking civil and voting rights.
Shannon's own political trajectory illustrates the GOP's push to elevate Black conservatives. A Lawton native, he became Oklahoma's youngest and first African American House speaker in 2013 and the first member of the Chickasaw Nation to hold the office. He is heavily favored to win the lieutenant governor's race in November in solidly Republican Oklahoma.
Speaking in primetime at the convention, Shannon said the appearance gave him a chance to stand on the national stage. «Any time I get a chance to tell the story about how great Oklahoma is and how great America is, I won't miss a chance to do it,» he said.
The midterm convention marked an early effort by Republicans to frame the 2026 campaign around economic themes and minority outreach, even as Trump remains a central figure in the party's messaging. Whether Shannon's argument holds will depend on whether the 2024 gains among Black voters persist when the president's name is not on the ballot.