Biden’s team announced a “new approach” to trying to win Florida, a significant challenge considering the ‘dominance’ Trump has here. The tycoon not only lives in Florida, in his Mar-a-Lago mansion, in Palm Beach, but he also has broad political support, to which is added an increase in electoral registration in favor of the Republican Party.
Even so, Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, revealed in recent days a series of capital injection plans in Florida, after pointing out its “strategic importance” to secure the necessary 270 electoral votes to be president. The southeastern state accounts for 29 of those Electoral College votes.
Despite Trump’s victory in Florida in the 2020 elections, Chávez Rodríguez said he trusts the Biden’s “ability” to reverse that superioritywhile highlighting what he called “shortcomings of the Trump campaign and its vulnerabilities.”
Biden’s campaign implements a specific focus on the Hispanic electorate, crucial in Florida due to its significant Cuban, Colombian and Puerto Rican population, among other nationalities. Therefore, she has allocated considerable resources for advertising, with investments ranging between $25 million and $30 million at different stages.
Remote possibilities
Former Miami-Dade mayor and Democratic political analyst Álex Penelas believes that the chances of Biden winning Florida are “remote,” although with the announced investments and the issue of abortion on the ballot “there could be some chance,” he said. to DIARIO LAS AMERICAS.
This controversial issue that the analyst points out is related to the constitutional amendment for the eventual approval of abortion in Florida, which will be submitted to voters for consideration in the November 5 elections, an initiative whose greatest push comes from groups supported by the Party. Democrat.
“Democrats are going to vote overwhelmingly in favor of abortion, and that may benefit Biden. The issue here is that a greater number of voters go to the polls,” she indicated.
From your perspective, Democrats have seen “some level of openness in Florida” stemming from the abortion question and, therefore, “not only are they investing more money, but they are sending people, like the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, to campaign in search of more votes.”
He also said that “the chaos” of the Florida Democratic Party, unleashed since the 2022 elections, when Ron DeSantis won overwhelmingly, could take votes away from Biden, while some independents could place their trust in the president on the abortion issue.
Penelas observes the investments as “a great opportunity” for Democratic candidates, as is the case of Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who is challenging Republican Marco Rubio, for one of Florida’s two seats in the federal Senate.
He added that money in an electoral campaign, which allows advertising and expenses, is important, “but it is not definitive.” He also estimates that the only way for Biden to win in Florida “depends on three high-voting counties, and one of them is Miami-Dade,” where Democrats continue to have a majority of registered voters.
Importance of abortion on the ballot
For her part, Democratic political analyst Sasha Tirador emphasized that “even if Florida is not won, the decision of the (state) Supreme Court to allow the right to abortion to be held in a referendum forces the Republicans, and in this case the campaign of Trump, invest millions of dollars in the state to ‘survive’ that ballot question.”
“If this question was not on the ballot, the Republicans would not have invested anything in the state of Florida because it was taken for granted,” he said.
This leads, according to Tirador, to The Democratic Party and the Biden campaign “can concentrate their money in key states to win the presidencysuch as Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania”, which, in his opinion, would have posed a different scenario, if the issue of abortion did not have “prominence” in Florida.
For the political affairs expert, the controversy that looms today around abortion “will be crucial whether it is on the ballot or not, because even in the states where the question is not on the ballot, women, according to statistics and that we have seen in previous elections, they are coming out to vote for that in numbers never seen before.”
“They are the radicals”
In the opinion of Republican political analyst Frank Rodríguez, abortion is the “weak link in the chain to Republican victory. Not so much in Florida, but in other states.”
Likewise, he contextualized the issue of abortion as “one of the few cards that the Democratic Party has, in view of the demagoguery that is being used on this issue.”
Rodríguez criticized the “Democratic narrative” that “Republicans are going to ban abortion, even that they are going to ban birth control. “They are absurd things.”
After quoting Trump’s words, he explained that “the reality” is that “the radicals on these issues are they (the Democrats) who do not define themselves because even If the baby is nine months pregnant, they would allow abortion, and, even worse, they would allow it after birth, which is infanticide”.
He acknowledged that “this is a very personal and thorny issue,” in which “the Republicans do not have good communication on the matter, and it is going to cost them in some states. “I don’t know if it’s even the margin of victory, but it is a concern for Republicans.”
Regarding Democrats’ investments in Florida to strengthen Biden’s campaign, Rodríguez said that “it is already too late to reverse the effects of uncontrolled inflation, which weighs on voters’ pockets.”
“Many of these expenses are wasteful,” he stated.
Reorganization
In this scenario of ‘back and forth’, Jasmine Burney-Clark, founder of Equal Ground, was named director of Biden’s campaign in Florida, while Phillip Jerez, who holds the position of executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, and Jackie Lee, a political consultant from Orlando, will serve as the campaign’s main advisors.
Nikki Fried, president of the Florida Democratic Party, celebrated these appointments, interpreting them as a sign of the “campaign’s commitment” to winning Florida’s electoral votes in the November elections.
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