You can waste a lot of time and money getting Democrats to vote for a Republican. It’s less time consuming and costs less to convince a Democrat to not bother voting.
All it costs in this case is 5 min explaining that the statement is accurate and that before anyone screams ‘racist’ they should actually disprove his statements with fact. And most important of all, not back down.
If he’s campaigned on this to begin with we’d all be better off.