MILWAUKEE — Patricia Easley (aka “P Rae”) seems like a one-woman army, an unstoppable force — like the former president and GOP presidential candidate she adores. But this human dynamo is going up against the immovable object of entrenched Democrat politics in the lives of what she sees as ideologically enslaved black Chicagoans.
Decked out in an American flag shirt — proudly bearing her home state and accented with cartoon Donald Trumps — and a red “Make America Great Again” sun hat to shield herself from the late-afternoon Milwaukee sun, Easley was taking it to the streets Monday just outside the Republican National Convention’s secured campus. Scrapping with the protesting leftists screaming obscenities about Trump to no one in particular, this West Chicago resident seems to be one happy warrior for the conservative cause.
Photo by M.D. Kittle
Easley is the founder of ChicagoRed, a “movement” of “Independent and Conservative voters” dedicated to the tall order of swinging Chicago right. Easley doesn’t see herself as the black Don Quixote, though. She says more than 100 people have joined the fledgling group since launching in March, and she says Chicago hasn’t seen nothing yet.
“Our goal is to get people away from the mentality of liberal failure that is happening in our city,” P Rae told me. “Our grandparents ran from the south to this city, and they met the same people in the north who continue to terrorize them and their children.”
The Machine
Easley, a conservative activist and radio personality, earned huge props from former President Donald Trump earlier this year after calling out leftist Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for laying out the taxpayer-funded welcome mat for a flood of illegal immigrants. The illegal alien crisis, the direct result of President Joe Biden’s open-door border policy, is one of the leading issues on the minds of voters in the upcoming presidential rematch race.
“‘P RAE’ EASLEY — I watched your great interview tonight with Pete Hegseth. You are a real leader, far ahead of the times. This is happening all over America. We will put Chicago into the winning mix! Will be calling you,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.
But Chicago is a leftist fortress where the Republican Party seems like the Whigs in 1860.
Democrats are to Chicago what Taylor Swift fans are to a suburban middle school cheerleading summer camp: They’re everywhere. (More so among black voters, who voted for Gov. J.B. Pritzker, arguably one of the whitest, most race-pandering, and morbidly obese politicians in America, at a 90 percent-plus clip in the 2022 election.)
Chicago is infamous for its Democratic Party machine.
Tipping Point?
The nation’s third-most populous city (for now, anyway) is also infamous for its crime, poverty, and overall dysfunction — generational failures wrought by decades of entrenched Democrat leadership, conservatives like Easley argue. In October, The Center Square reported that “Chicago-area residents are now three times more likely to become a homicide victim than they are to be struck by lightning.” According to the report, black Chicagoans represented more than three-quarters of the city’s homicide victims in the latest figures.
Yet, black voters continue to vote straight Democrat tickets.
Easley believes things have hit a tipping point — in her city and among black voters nationwide. There definitely is growing discontent, an all-too-common feeling in the buyer’s remorse Biden world.
An NBC poll in January found 75 percent of black voters saying they would vote for President Joe Biden in the election. That’s down from the 92 percent of black voters who once supported the old Democrat in 2020. That’s significant, particularly in swing states like Wisconsin expected to decide November’s winner. The most recent NBC poll — post-debate debacle — shows Biden’s support among black voters slipping to 69 percent. Vice President Kamala Harris, who is black and Asian, fares a bit better (78% support) when pollsters talk about her replacing Biden — who has pushed aside calls to step aside.
‘Apocaloptimist’
Leechia Wilder, an alternate convention delegate from Sikeston, Missouri, is as direct as blunt force trauma. She accused the Democratic Party of “selling lies and death, the sexualization of children destroying young lives.” But she told me that she’s one of the few openly black conservatives in the small city just north of the “Missouri Bootheel.” She says she’s hopeful that more black Missourians step up and vote against what she calls the “Demoncrats.”
“I’m an apocaloptimist. I know things are going to get terribly bad but I’ve got hope for the future,” she told me Monday evening during the convention’s opening events.
Photo by M.D Kittle
For Easley, it’s much more of a voter revolution. She said black Americans are growing increasingly tired of the white-led progressive “soft bigotry of low expectations.”
“The Democrat Party likes to treat black people like we’re a pitiful charity. That’s because they are the party of slave owners. They’re the party of the Confederacy. They’re the party of the KKK,” the conservative activist said. “Everything they’ve ever done has been via violence to stifle black progress in this country. Now they’re playing psyop saying, ‘We’re just doing this to help you. You need me,’ We’re telling them, ‘We don’t need you. Leave us alone. Every time you people show up things get worse.’”
Trump is knocking on the door. As he asked black Americans in his first presidential run in 2016, “What do you have to lose?”
“No group in America has been more harmed by [Democrat] policies than African Americans,” he said. “Tonight, I’m asking for the vote of every single African American citizen in this country who wants to see a better future.”
“To those I say the following … What do you have to lose?”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.