This is Kim Driscoll, the 50th mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, and the first woman to ever hold the office.

All of us here in the Witch City hope you'll have a safe and spooky Halloween.

This podcast was recorded at 11.25 a.m. Eastern time on Thursday, October 29th.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show.

I feel like that time stamp guys was made for me because in an all other universe, I could have sworn I've actually interviewed Mayor Kim Driscoll when I was a reporter in Boston.

And Salem is like the go to place at Halloween. If you guys have never been there, it's actually an amazing place to go to for Halloween.

Yes, she said I haven't been there, but Witch City. I think it's amazing that she's the first woman to be mayor,

which but makes sense because they were getting rid of all those women's back in the day, but took a long time to recover.

It's getting rid of all those.

Well, hey there, it's the Empire Politics podcast. I'm Miss McCullough, I cover the presidential campaign.

I'm one of Summers, I cover demographics and culture.

And I'm Aisha Roscoe, I cover the White House.

So today is the campaign winds down. I wanted us to take a deep dive into how both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are trying to reach Black voters.

I'd make the case that perhaps the best explanation for why Joe Biden is the Democratic presidential nominee today is because he had the overwhelming support of Black voters during the Democratic primary.

On the other side, President Trump, despite the fact that he has this habit of insulting and attacking Black women,

he boasts that he has done more for Black people than any president since Abraham Lincoln.

And to be clear, nobody thinks President Trump is going to win the Black vote, not even Trump supporters would say that, but there are a couple of big questions.

You know, can Trump chip away and win more Black voters than Republicans normally do?

And can Joe Biden turn out more Black voters than Hillary Clinton did?

So, wanna let's begin with Democrats.

How would you describe what their outreach has looked like, what it's felt like this cycle?

Yeah, so Asma, I mean, as you know, from covering the Biden campaign, if you talk to any Democratic strategist, Democratic activists, they will talk about over and over again, the importance of the Black vote,

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