By Trevor Hunnicutt and John Whitesides
(Reuters) – Democrat Joe Biden on Tuesday will make his first campaign visit of the year to Florida, where opinion polls show a tight race against President Donald Trump amid signs of lagging support for Biden among the battleground state’s crucial Hispanic voters.
With less than 50 days until the Nov. 3 election, the Biden campaign is trying to overcome concerns about enthusiasm among Florida Latinos, as well as a disinformation campaign that has tried to paint the moderate Democratic nominee as a socialist.
A recent NBC News/Marist poll showed the two White House contenders in a dead heat in Florida and Trump with a 4-point edge over Biden among the state’s Latinos – a group Democrat Hillary Clinton won by 27 percentage points in 2016, according to exit polls. Other polls have shown Biden leading among state Hispanics but still trailing Clinton’s support.
Trump won Florida over Clinton by just 1.2 percentage points, which helped propel him to the White House. His inroads with Florida Hispanics have been fueled by his strength with conservative Cuban Americans, a Republican-leaning bloc he has courted throughout his presidency.
“Clearly, there has been some hemorrhaging of Hispanic support going on, mainly Cuban Americans,” said Democratic state Senator Annette Taddeo, a Colombian American. “The Republicans have worked really, really hard, and they have been constantly present.”
The steady drumbeat of Republican attacks on Biden, the vice president under Barack Obama, as a socialist has also taken a toll, Florida Democrats said. The Republican convention last month featured a Cuban-born Florida businessman, Maximo Alvarez, who compared Biden’s agenda to the promises of Fidel Castro’s Communist rule.
Some Florida Democrats said they had noticed a sharp rise in videos and commentary in social media feeds and texts warning, falsely, that Biden is a socialist and pushing other conspiracy theories about Democrats.
“We are seeing a massive disinformation campaign in Spanish aimed at our community calling Biden and Democrats socialists, and it is having an effect,” said Evelyn Perez-Verdia, a Colombian-American Democratic strategist in south Florida.
‘SOCIALISM OF THE LEFT’
Ana Hernandez, 63, a transportation auditor from Miami and a Cuban American whose family immigrated to the United States in 1964 to escape communism, said she could not support Democrats because they were too far left.
“I would rather stay with what we have than go communist,” she said, adding the “socialism of the left” was her top concern.
Florida, where Hispanics make up about 20% of the state electorate, is a linchpin in Trump’s re-election strategy. A Biden win of Florida’s 29 electoral votes would sharply reduce Trump’s chances of another term – no Republican has won the presidency without Florida since Calvin Coolidge in 1924.
Trump, a former New York businessman, changed his permanent residence to Florida last year.
Nationally, Hispanics make up the largest minority voting group at more than 13% of eligible voters. Biden’s support with Latino voters across the country has dropped, with the group favoring him over Trump by 9 points in August, down from 30 points in July, according to Reuters/Ipsos data.
The Biden campaign, urged by Taddeo and other Democrats to do more to court Latinos, has stepped up Spanish-language and bilingual advertising and hired more staff in battleground states including Florida to reach the vital voting bloc.
Ahead of events on Tuesday in Tampa and Kissimmee, two Florida cities with heavy Puerto Rican populations, Biden said: “I am going to work like the devil to make sure I turn every Latino and Hispanic vote.”
He will get some help from former Democratic primary rival Michael Bloomberg, who will spend $100 million on Biden’s behalf in Florida with a particular focus on Latino voters.
Polls show Biden running ahead of Clinton’s level of 2016 support among seniors in Florida, another crucial voting bloc, and among white voters, giving him plenty of pathways to reach a majority, Democrats said.
They said there was plenty of opportunity for Biden to make up ground with Florida Hispanics, particularly among the state’s non-Cuban Latinos who include a fast-growing Puerto Rican population and Mexicans, Colombians and Venezuelans.
Biden has vowed to rescind many of the hardline immigration policies put in place by Trump’s administration, and has emphasized the need for broad health and economic strategies to recover from the coronavirus pandemic that has hit Latino communities particularly hard.
Unite the Country, a Democratic group that supports Biden, is spending $1.4 million on digital advertising aimed at Latinos in south Florida. Steve Schale, the group’s chief executive, said the group could be most effective by driving up the support of non-Cuban Hispanic voters who are not attached to a party and are typically more persuadable.
Felice Gorordo, a Cuban-American Biden ally and finance committee member, said the campaign should focus on younger Cuban voters, who do not see foreign policy as the No. 1 issue, making them more open to the campaign’s central message on recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and John Whitesides; Additional reporting by Michael Martina and Chris Kahn; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)
