Biden visits farm, touts investment in rural areas
NORTHFIELD, MINN. » President Joe Biden visited a family-run farm in Minnesota on Wednesday and was holding a fundraiser featuring many of the state's top Democrats, championing his administration's investments in rural America while flexing political muscle on the home turf of his new 2024 primary challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips.
The visit is official rather than a campaign stop. The president announced more than $5 billion in spending, largely in rural areas.
It will go toward better adapting agriculture to climate change, as well as expanding high-speed internet access and improving local infrastructure. The funding comes from infrastructure and inflation reduction laws which Biden helped champion through Congress.
“Instead of exporting jobs overseas for cheaper labor, now we're creating jobs here and expanding American products and selling them overseas,” Biden told a cheering crowd inside a barn at Dutch Creek Farms in Northfield, about 40 miles south of Minneapolis. “We're not only transforming rural communities, we're transforming our economy.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack accompanied Biden on the trip and is among top members of the president's Cabinet who will spend this week and next traveling to various states, promoting administration investments. Vilsack called Wednesday's announcement “an exciting opportunity to celebrate the importance of rural America.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said the Minnesota swing was planned before Phillips announced his candidacy last week “and has no relationship” to the president's challenger. But the congressman is the only elected Democrat to campaign against him for the White House.
Phillips, 54, is a moderate from the largely well-todo, comfortably Democratic Minneapolis suburbs. He has been saying since last year that Biden shouldn't be seeking reelection and should instead step aside to make way for a new generation.
He points to polls showing voters, even many Democrats, concerned about the 80-year-old president's age and electability against Donald Trump, the former president and Republican front-runner.
Biden's trip, coming so soon after Phillips' announcement, will be an opportunity for the president to limit any potential support for his nascent primary challenger. Invited fundraiser guests include past donors to Phillips' congressional campaigns, as well as Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
Phillips' campaign will feel “almost like a cold glass of water being thrown in his face,” said Ken Martin, chair of Minnesota Democrats and a Democratic National Committee vice chair.
Martin is a friend of Phillips and recruited him to run for his House seat. But if Phillips believes that people are clamoring for alternatives to Biden, Martin said, “he may be alone in that thinking amongst Democratic Party leaders.”
There really does not seem to be as much of an opening here, as much as he might want, or think there is, or should be,” he said.
Walz has been even more full-throated in his defense of Biden, releasing a fundraising email Friday on Biden's behalf before Phillips even formally got into the race titled “Minnesotans Love Joe Biden.”