Biden coming to Wis. next week as campaign heats up
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will travel to Milwaukee next week for a campaign event, just one week after Vice President Kamala Harris rallied supporters in Madison.
Biden plans to be in Milwaukee on Wednesday before traveling to Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday, his campaign confirmed to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The White House said he would be participating in “political events” but provided no additional information.
The visits comes as the president seeks to create momentum off of a a fiery State of the Union speech that set the tone for his re-election campaign.
The trip also comes just one week after Harris stopped in Madison, a Democratic stronghold, to announce the signing of an executive order aiming to expand apprenticeship programs. Harris at the time also visited her childhood home in the capital city and urged Democrats to turn out to vote in November.
Biden’s visit will be the seventh from a top administration official in 2024, further highlighting the importance of Wisconsin in his path to reelection. He last was in Wisconsin in late December, when he stopped at the Black Chamber of Commerce in Milwaukee to tout his economic agenda and discuss investments in underrepresented communities.
In his State of the Union remarks Thursday night, Biden took aim at former President Donald Trump, his presumed opponent in November, on multiple occasions but did not mention Trump by name. He sought to contrast his administration with Trump’s campaign, which he described as one of “revenge and retribution.”
Trump, meanwhile, has yet to visit Wisconsin this election cycle. Recent polling shows both Trump and Biden are similarly unpopular among likely voters in the state.
“One of the two campaigns appears to be aware of the path to the White House,” Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler tweeted of the news Friday.
Harris in her visit to the state this past Wednesday laid out the stakes of the election and encouraged her supporters to engage other potential voters.
“The work that you are doing here in Wisconsin is going to make all the difference in terms of where we are and who we are and where we go for the next four years in our country,” she said at a campaign stop in downtown Madison.