By Jaden Perry, Staff Writer

In the final hours of the 2024 Presidential Election, both candidates vie relentlessly for an upper hand in what’s shaping to be an incredibly close race. At the center of this political tug-of-war lie battleground states, pop-culture promotion — and Black men. 

Often described as being a crucial voting bloc to sway in election cycles, the winning over of Black men has once again made it to the forefront of political conversation. While it remains unclear which candidate will definitively win the majority of this group, two men on Bowie State University’s campus — Zaire Bond and Mark Cox — lend some insight into the varied perspectives of the valued voting bloc. 

As of Nov. 5, a poll taken by The Economist shows Vice President Kamala Harris leading Former President Donald Trump by 1.1 percent. This is close, but it reflects the candidate 7 of the 12 polled Black men on campus say they will opt to bubble in come Nov. 5. 

 Zaire Bond — a 19-year-old sophomore and history education major — is one of those men. “I’ll be voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for president and vice president.” Bond also plans to vote blue throughout the ballot to — as he says — dampen the influence of another Trump presidency. “We have to worry about Congress because Congress is the one making the laws. And so we’re gonna try our best to get out there and vote and motivate other people who are voting too.”

Alongside abortion rights, DEI laws and police reform, Bond’s top point of concern is education. “Since I’m an education major, I do not want the Department of Education to end,” he said in reference to The Heritage Foundation’s conservative Project 2025 plan that aims to eliminate the department. “Because, I know about all the different types of benefits the Department of Education provides, which is like the different financial aids and access to different scholarships, and also the funding of HBCUs.” 

He worries what this could mean for Bowie State, a publicly funded HBCU that has encountered funding challenges in the past. However, the elimination of the Board of Education hits even closer to home for the history fanatic. 

As the president and founder of the Black Male Educators and Leaders Alliance Club, Bond’s goal is to empower black men on campus as educators — who will eventually become leaders. “And many educators do more than just [sit] inside their classrooms,” he said, drawing a direct connection between local educators and policymakers, “a lot of them are leaders in their local community, creating laws for the [benefit of] students that are inside their classroom.”

Though his father, a history teacher from Baltimore County, helped set the foundation of his political views, Bond began to step into his own set of values back in 2016. “Since then, we had a lot of issues that have sort of impacted the black community,” he said. By 2020, his values concerning race were solidified with the racially motivated killings of African Americans like George Floyd.

Citing the hard-fought struggle for African Americans to gain the right to vote, Bond remains strong in his belief in the democratic process — and confident in his decision to cast his first-ever ballot for Kamala Harris. 

“I feel very excited because I get to play a role in the American process and what it means to the American citizen as well as for black people in particular,” he said, “because our ancestors have worked tirelessly to ensure that our people are able to vote … so I definitely will be making sure that I enact that.”

II: Mark ‘Ikram’ Cox: “On the fence”

A Howard University Alum, a Bowie State graduate, an adjunct English professor and a devout Muslim are just a few descriptors attributed to Mark Cox — aka Mark Ikram. Despite his educational background, however, Cox is having a harder time than Bond to cast a vote for his fellow alumna, Kamala Harris. 

“I’m still on the fence about that, to be honest with you,” said Cox, “I’m a Howard alumni, so I do want Kamala to succeed. But at the same time, there’s some things with her that I’m not a fan of.”

The 38-year-old Cox states that his primary reason for not supporting Harris is her recent endorsement from former Vice President Dick Cheney and former U.S Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld — or as Cox describes them — “war hawks.” 

“Will she have obligations to that neoconservative agenda when she gets in there? And that’s why I don’t know if she actually will be able to thwart their influence.”

Though, this doesn’t mean the other side of the aisle has completely won him over either. 

From Cox’s perspective, Donald Trump presents a similar concern. Cox describes the first Trump administration as a “circus” — however, he does admire some things regarding the character of the former president. “There’s some things about Trump I admire, particularly his discipline,” said Cox.

Still, Cox’s support for Trump waivers for much the same reasons as Kamala’s — because of the endorsements that back the campaign. Organizations such as the Proud Boys, Moms for Liberty and the architects of Project 2025 —The Heritage Foundation — are what wane his support for the party. 

Along with being a two-time HBCU grad and English professor at Bowie State, Cox is also the program coordinator for the Scholars Fellows program at the university. “We are working hard to get a contingent of black male teacher candidates through college,” said Cox — describing the mission of the program. The program, as Cox explains,  accommodates a range of different age groups, spanning anywhere between 18-year-olds to 40-year-olds. 

Paired with his background in education, Cox is a devout Muslim who, after graduating from Howard University, struggled for 9 years alongside his wife to pay off their student loan debts.

This extended debt delayed the birth of their first child — so it’s no surprise that this issue is the top concern on Cox’s list of political priorities. “People actually think like education is a bad idea now like to go to college because it’s so pricey with these student loans So that’s the biggest thing for me.”

Falling under the management of absorbent student loans, Cox’s three other important political issues include African American reparations, being anti-war mongering — and food rights. Emphasizing the latter, Cox’s initial goal was to vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before he dropped out in late August of this year. 

Out of the pool of 12 polled Black men at Bowie State, Cox was the only voter still undecided. And, opposite to Bond, Cox has little faith in the current two-party system. In 2004, Cox’s first vote was at 18, then in 2008, but after that he didn’t vote until the recent 2020 election. “I voted then because I felt like with regard to the economy, I had to make a choice to voting in that election.”

Cox was unclear about which candidate he voted for then, but today, he suggests a unique solution — formulate a party by African Americans, for African Americans. “It seems like every four years we’ve caught up in the same cycle talking about the same things, which we could actually perform together and solve these problems in and of ourselves.”