Biden aims to court Latino voters and secure his standing
RENO, NEV. >> President Joe Biden sought personally Tuesday to reengage the Latino voters who helped power the incumbent's winning coalition in 2020 by drawing contrasts with Republican challenger Donald Trump on veterans, job creation, foreign policy and other issues.
Biden told supporters greeting him at a campaign office in Reno, Nevada, that he and Trump have a “different value set” and he criticized Trump for comments he's made about veterans and others.
“I never heard a president say the things that he has said,” Biden said. He said millions of jobs disappeared during Trump's presidency and that the Republican doesn't understand foreign policy or U.S. national security needs.
Biden said Washoe County, where Reno is located, and Nevada are “really, really, really critical” for the November election. Nevada is among seven states that will determine the next president.
“We're going to be him again,” Biden said of Trump.
Biden also was stopping Tuesday in Las Vegas to promote his administration's housing policies and Phoenix for another campaign appearance in a critical swing county paired with an event to discuss his support of the computer chip manufacturing sector.
His arrival in Reno coincided with the launch of Latinos con Biden-Harris (Spanish for Latinos with BidenHarris). Campaign ads ran in English, Spanish and Spanglish, a blend of the two languages, as did two Spanishlanguage radio interviews with the president. Biden is also emphasizing his prounion, pro-abortion rights message during the trip.
“The Latino community is critical to the value set we have,” Biden said on “El Bueno, la Mala y el Feo” (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”) on Univision Radio. “I plan on working like the devil to earn your support.”
Biden's push with Latino voters is part of the campaign's broader efforts to lay the groundwork to reengage various constituencies that will be critical to his reelection bid. That effort is all the more crucial as key parts of Biden's base, such as Black and Hispanic adults, have become increasingly disenchanted with his performance in office.
In the Univision interview, Biden turned questions about immigration into an indictment of Trump for calling migrants “animals” and saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. Biden also noted Trump's pledge to carry out mass deportations if given another term.
“We have to stop this guy, we can't let this happen,” Biden said. “We are a nation of immigrants.”
In an AP-NORC poll conducted in February, 38% of U.S. adults approved of how Biden was handling his job. Nearly 6 in 10 Black adults (58%) approved, compared to 36% of Hispanic adults. Black adults are more likely than white and Hispanic adults to approve of Biden, but that approval has dropped in the three years since Biden took office.
Biden's reelection campaign, along with allied Democratic groups, has opened offices in Washoe County and in specific areas of Las Vegas that aides said will help the campaign with Black, Latino and Asian American voters.
Bilingual campaign organizers are already in place in Arizona, and the campaign has opened an office in Maryvale, a major Latino community in Phoenix. The campaign has hired more than 40 staffers in Nevada and Arizona.
Campaign officials believe that tuned-out voters are starting to pay attention to the reality of a rematch between Biden and Trump now that they have clinched their respective nominations.