Can President Biden secure support with funding for Black-owned businesses in Wisconsin?

President of the United States - Joe Biden | Credits: AP
President of the United States - Joe Biden | Credits: AP

United States: US President Joe Biden will announce that a Black-owned business group may receive funds to revitalize downtown Milwaukee as he seeks to shore up support in a state that might be critical to his reelection hopes in 2024 on a visit to Wisconsin on Wednesday.

Biden will pay a visit to the Milwaukee Black Chamber of Commerce to address what the White House has described as a surge in Black-owned small companies. Rashawn Spivey, the creator and owner of Hero Plumbing, a Black-owned small business in Milwaukee that eliminates lead pipes, will join him.

 Biden’s visit is an attempt to garner Black voter support ahead of what his campaign team anticipated would be a challenging reelection campaign. Biden’s successes in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – all swing states taken by Republican Donald Trump in 2016 – aided his 2020 triumph. He will very certainly need to be re-elected in several of those states.

 Although Black voters have historically been the most devoted to the Democratic Party, some of them are disappointed with the Biden administration.

It is expected that Biden will declare that the Grow Milwaukee Coalition is among the 22 finalists for a program run by the Commerce Department that would provide funding to support job creation in the most severely affected communities in the United States.

 The coalition’s plan would put money toward reviving Milwaukee’s historic 30th Street Industrial Corridor and establishing a link between the historically segregated Black community and the city’s economic opportunities.

According to a White House fact sheet, the percentage of Black households that own a business increased from seven percent (7%) in 2007 to two percent (2%) in 2019 and 2022, respectively.

As per the information sheet, new company applications in Milwaukee are up 70 percent, with Americans filing a record 15 million applications to start new firms countrywide.

A Reuters-Ipsos survey released on December 5 placed Biden’s popularity at 40 percent, approaching the lowest level of his administration, indicating the difficulties ahead for his reelection quest.