Biden seeking to woo Latinos in trip to Fla.
Joe Biden, TAMPA, FLA. — making his first trip to Florida as the Democratic presidential nominee, on Tuesday sought to build support among Latinos, who could decide the election in one of the nation’s fiercest battleground states.
In a roundtable with veterans in Tampa, Biden tore into President Donald Trump for his reported remarks referring to fallen soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” Trump has denied making denigrating remarks on veterans, first reported on anonymous sources in The Atlantic, but many of the comments were later confirmed independently by The Associated Press.
“Nowhere are his faults more glaring and more offensive, to meat least, than when it comes to his denigration of our service members, veterans, wounded warriors whohave fallen,” Biden said. Speaking of his lates on Beau, who served overseas as a Delaware Army National Guard member, the former vice president said, “He’s gone now, but he’s no sucker.”
Later in the day, Biden held a Hispanic Heritage Month kickoff event in Kissimmee, near Orlando, as part of an urgent mission to build support among Latinos who could decide the election in one of the nation’s fiercest battleground states.
A win for Biden in Florida would dramatically narrow Trump’s path to reelection. But in a state where elections are often decided by a percentage point, there are mounting concerns that Biden may be slipping, particularly with the state’s influential Latino voters.
An NBC-Mari st poll released last week found Latino sin the state about evenly divided between Biden and Trump. Democrat Hillary Clinton led Trump by a 59% to 36% margin among Latinos in the same poll in 2016 — and Trump won Florida by about 1 percentage point.
At the roundtable with veterans, Biden spoke about his experience as vice president escorting military caskets home and working on military issues, and about his own commitments to strengthen the VA and tackle veterans mental health crisis.
“President Trump likes to say he passed VA Choice, but just like everything else he seems to say, it’s a figment of his imagination or a flatout lie,” he said, referencing a program passed under the Obama administration that steers more patients to the private sector.
Biden’s trip suggests he isn’t taking chances in Florida. He’s spending his day along the Interstate 4 corridor, which is often where campaigns are won or lost. While Republicans typically post big numbers in the northern and southwestern parts of the state and Democrats are strong in coastal cities, campaigns typically battle it out for every vote in central Florida.
Biden’s decision to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month in Kissimmee reflects a focus on the state’Puerto Rican community, many of whom relocated to Florida after Hurricane Maria devastated the island of the U.S. territory in 2017.
To coincide with his visit, the Biden campaign announced a new plan focused on boosting Puerto Rico’s economy and helping the island continue to recover from Maria. Biden would create a federal working group focused on aiding Puerto Rico in rebuilding, and his plan would forgive disaster relief loans to Puerto Rican towns, expand a food stamp program to residents of the island, invest in Puerto Rico’s power and schooling infrastructure and health care services, and help alleviate the territory’s massive debt load.