A4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
ning ads that intersperse video of
Biden touting his progressive
bona fides with images of leftist
Latin American dictators.
While such efforts to portray
Biden — a centrist Democrat who
has roundly rejected socialism —
as a radical socialist have not reso-
nated nationally, Trump support-
ers hope they can be more effec-
tive in Florida. Among those back-
ers is Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who
defied the 2018 Democratic wave
to win his seat thanks in part to
significant support from Latino
voters. “They seem pretty confi-
dent,” Scott said of the Trump
team’s outlook on Florida.
And the state may be more fluid
than other battlegrounds. Further
roiling the landscape, former New
York mayor Mike Bloomberg
plans to spend at least $100 mil-
lion in the state on Biden’s behalf,
The Washington Post reported
Sunday, a massive 11th-hour infu-
sion that will fund ads in Spanish
as well as English.
Biden has clearly begun ap-
proaching Florida with more ur-
gency, adding experienced Florida
strategists to his staff and devot-
ing more attention to the state. His
campaign has stepped up his ag-
gressiveness on the airwaves, re-
leasing new Spanish-language TV
and radio commercials on Satur-
day challenging Trump’s rhetoric.
One ad contrasts Trump with
Biden on the economy and the
pandemic, flashing photos of
Biden alongside Obama, who won
the state twice.
The campaign also has tapped
Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kama-
la D. Harris (D-Calif.), a daughter
of immigrants who hails from a
state with a large Hispanic popu-
lation, to take on a large share of
the Latino outreach.
Harris campaigned in Florida
on Thursday, stopping at an are-
pas restaurant in Doral, a Miami
suburb with a large Venezuelan
population. During one exchange,
Harris referred to her husband in
Spanish as “mi esposo.” On Satur-
day, Harris held a virtual conver-
sation with local Latino business
owners in Arizona.
Annette Taddeo, a Florida state
senator who had urged the Biden
campaign to do more Latino out-
reach, joined Harris on her visit
and gave her high marks. Taddeo
said “the fact there are numerous
polls” showing trouble with Lati-
nos for Biden “is definitely alarm-
ing,” but that “the campaign is
responding as they should.”
“ They are just waking up to the
coffee,” added Roberto Rodriguez
Tejera, who hosts a Spanish-lan-
guage radio show in the Miami
area.
In another sign of that, Nuestro
PAC — headed by Rocha, Sanders’s
former Latino outreach coordina-
tor — plans to send 3 million piec-
es of mail to persuadable Latino
voters in Florida and other battle-
ground states. Rocha said he con-
ducted summer focus groups re-
vealing that persuadable Latino
voters did not want to hear about
Trump, but rather more about
Biden and “what he’s actually go-
ing to do to make our lives better.”
If Biden prevails in November,
Rocha quipped, the news headline
at the end of the race might be,
“Bernie Sanders’s Latino team
saves Joe Biden’s a--.”
[email protected]Scott Clement and Chelsea Janes
contributed to this report.leaders in July. “We like them, they
like me, and we’ve helped them a
lot with the jobs. Whether it’s jobs,
education, or so many other
things, it’s been really good.”
The politics of Florida’s Latino
community — like all politics in
the state — are complex. Florida is
home to the country's largest Cu-
ban American population, which
often holds more conservative
views than other Latino voters.
But it also includes a fast-growing
Puerto Rican population, which
leans Democratic, as well as many
voters of Mexican, Colombian,
and Venezuelan descent.
Trump’s pursuit of a more re-
strictive policy toward Cuba has
won him support in the Cuban
American community, analysts in
both parties say. Aggressive GOP
efforts to cast Democrats as radi-
cal socialists, even if inaccurate,
also have had an effect, Democrats
said, particularly when left largely
unchallenged.
“They’ve repeated it for so long
that they really have caused fear in
our community,” said Rep. Debbie
Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.), who
emigrated from Ecuador when
she was 14. “Yes, maybe we should
have rejected that premise much
earlier. But when something is so
far from the truth, the initial reac-
tion, I think, was to just complete-
ly dismiss it, not even address it.”
On Sunday, Trump tweeted that
“Sleepy Joe Biden has spent 47
years in politics being terrible to
Hispanics. Now he is relying on
Castro lover Bernie Sanders to
help him out.” Sanders has praised
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s liter-
acy program, while criticizing his
authoritarianism.
Trump also has been outspoken
on Venezuela, but has sent a more
muddled message. He initially
touted his hard line against au-
thoritarian leader Nicolás Ma-
duro, before opening the door to a
meeting and then backtracking.
Recent polls by NBC News/
Marist and Quinnipiac University
show Biden and Trump running
about even among Latino voters in
Florida — while Clinton outpaced
Trump by 27 points with the group
four years ago. Similarly, a poll of
voters in Miami-Dade County,
home to many Latinos, showed
Trump trailing Biden by 17; he lost
there by 30 points in 2016.
And even with Clinton’s com-
manding margin among Latinos,
“that still was not enough to win
the state,” said Democratic poll-
ster Fernand Amandi, whose firm
conducted the survey, adding that
this is “one of the reasons there is
such consternation” over the poll.
Biden’s allies play down the
polls’ significance, citing their
small sample sizes and English-
only interviews. Biden officials
said they have conducted their
own polling of Latinos in Florida
but declined to reveal the results.
Trump, for his part, is placing
great emphasis on Florida. He re-
cently changed his residence to
the state from Manhattan; his
presence is enhanced by his Mar-
a-Lago Club in Palm Beach; and
top campaign aide Brad Parscale
lives there. Recent moves also
could bolster the president, in-
cluding his recent expansion of an
offshore drilling ban and his bro-
kering of Israel’s acceptance by
more Arab nations, an issue im-
portant to Florida’s sizable Jewish
community.
Trump’s campaign has routine-
ly attacked Biden in Florida, run-is seen by many state Democrats
as part of a scramble to shore up
Latino support. While the cam-
paign has been tight-lipped about
Biden’s specific activities Tuesday,
Latino activists hope he will deliv-
er rousing remarks aimed at ener-
gizing their communities.
Many would have liked to see
that earlier this year. Instead, Lati-
no activists and strategists said,
the Biden campaign was slow to
fully engage despite entreaties
from local Democrats, while the
Trump campaign jumped in. They
cite a run of Trump ads in the early
summer on Florida Spanish-lan-
guage television, which was not
matched robustly by Biden until
about three weeks later.
Now, the Biden campaign is
outspending Trump in every His-
panic media market, Alex said. In
Florida, Biden’s campaign is en-
gaged in text-banking in Spanish
and has organized daily calls to
Hispanic radio stations. Trump,
one aide noted, has been cam-
paigning in the state for years, a
head start Biden did not have.
More broadly, Trump argues
that he has been a wonderful pres-
ident for the Latino community,
especially by creating jobs, a boast
that glosses over the economic
devastation of the pandemic.
“We’ve done really well with
Hispanics,” Trump said at a White
House roundtable with Latinogranddaughter of labor activist
César Chávez. “That definitely in-
cludes White voters and African
American voters, but it also in-
cludes Latino voters, [Asian
American and Pacific Islander]
voters and the tribal community.”
Pre-pandemic projections
showed that Latinos were on pace
to be the largest racial or ethnic
minority group in the electorate,
accounting for just over 13 percent
of eligible voters, according to the
Pew Research Center. But if per-
suasion is one challenge Demo-
crats face in courting them, mobi-
lization is another.
That is compounded by the
pandemic, which has dispropor-
tionately hit Latino communities
and prompted a national move
toward mail-in voting. “The Lati-
no community has lower confi-
dence in mail-in voting than other
communities,” Castro said.
No state is more urgent for
Democrats than Florida, whose
vote could determine the next
president. Trump’s fading popu-
larity among Florida seniors due
to his handling of the virus gives
Biden an opening, but that has
been offset in part by the former
vice president’s lackluster support
from Florida Latinos, making the
state essentially a toss-up.
Biden’s trip to the state Tuesday
will mark his first visit to Florida
as the Democratic nominee, and itis how late in the game they are
trying to put those pieces into
place.”
The Democratic anxiety ex-
tends to Arizona, which the party
hopes to turn blue for the first time
in 24 years, as well as Nevada,
North Carolina, Pennsylvania and
Georgia — all states where the
Latino vote is important. Adding
to Biden’s challenge in Florida, a
must-win state for Trump, is the
complexity of the Hispanic popu-
lation, where the president is pop-
ular among conservative Cuban
Americans and Republican at-
tacks on Democrats as “socialists”
have resonated.
Critics, including some close
Biden allies, are frustrated that
the Democratic nominee has not
given a major speech on Latino
issues, advertised more aggres-
sively and earlier on Spanish-lan-
guage media, or given more inter-
views to Latino news outlets.
“The campaign understands
that this is a priority, but at the
same time there needs to be a little
bit more support shown,” said Ju-
lián Castro, the only Latino who
ran in the Democratic presidential
primary. He added, “If we allow a
narrative to take shape that some-
how the issues of concern to this
growing community are not prior-
itized, then we risk backsliding in
the years to come.”
National surveys show Biden
faring slightly worse with Latinos
than Hillary Clinton in 2016, when
she won the group by 38 points. No
one on either side expects Biden to
lose the Latino vote; the question
is the size of his margin.
The issue is particularly stark
because Trump is seen by so many
activists as more anti-immigrant
and anti-Latino than any presi-
dent in memory. He began his
2016 campaign suggesting that
many Mexican immigrants are
“rapists,” and later he questioned
the objectivity of a judge of Mexi-
can descent.
But Latino leaders say Biden
has yet to overcome suspicion of
Barack Obama’s tough deporta-
tion policies or outline his own
immigration plans in greater de-
tail; that his inner circle lacks
enough Latino decision-makers;
and that his campaign has focused
almost entirely on White subur-
banites and African Americans to
the detriment of their community.
Latino Democrats also worry
about the onslaught of Republican
attacks casting them as socialist
sympathizers.
Biden campaign officials said
they are steadily building an ag-
gressive Latino outreach pro-
gram, with Latino vote directors
in 11 states and micro-targeted
efforts in various communities.
The campaign’s advertising in-
cludes specially curated speakers
— with Mexican accents in Ari-
zona, Cuban accents in Miami,
and Puerto Rican accents in Or-
lando and Tampa.
The campaign has divided Flor-
ida into three regions with indi-
vidual Latino vote directors and
ramped up its staffing and ads.
“We take Florida extremely seri-
ously,” said Cristóbal Alex, a senior
Biden adviser who works on Lati-
no outreach. “As the vice president
said in my very first sit-down with
him, we are committed to compet-
ing for every single vote.”
Latino leaders routinely note
that the community is far more
complex and varied than many
strategists assume. Some Latinos
are quite conservative, holding
traditional religious and social po-
sitions, while others are young and
liberal, and Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.) had significant success in
attracting their support during the
Democratic presidential primary.
Chuck Rocha, who spearheaded
Sanders’s Latino outreach, said
the party now risks leaving behind
a hugely influential population.
“There is still no direct invest-
ment into the community to get
our vote out,” said Rocha, who now
runs a super PAC aiming to boost
Latino turnout in November.
“We’re still doubling, tripling, qua-
drupling down on White women
and White steelworkers in Michi-
gan.” Rocha said he is struggling to
secure funding to air an ad featur-
ing young Latinos who supported
Sanders in the primary and now
back Biden.
Sanders himself has voiced pri-
vate concerns about Biden’s stand-
ing with the community, according
to three people with knowledge of
the conversations who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to discuss
private conversations. The senator
from Vermont “thinks that a stron-
ger outreach to young people, the
Latino community and the progres-
sive movement will be of real help
to the campaign,” said his former
campaign manager, Faiz Shakir.
Biden campaign officials
strongly reject the notion that La-
tino voters are not a priority. “We
really see the coalition to win as
helping to rebuild the original
Obama-Biden coalition,” said
Biden deputy campaign manager
Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the
BIDEN FROM A
Trump’s inroads with Latinos frustrate top Democrats
CHANDAN KHANNA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGESJABIN BOTSFORD/THE WASHINGTON POSTSALWAN GEORGES/THE WASHINGTON POSTABOVE: Sen. Kamala D.
Harris, the Democratic
vice-presidential
nominee, with husband
Doug Emhoff, visits a
restaurant Thursday in
Doral, Fla., a Miami
suburb with a large
Venezuelan population.
BELOW: Julián Castro,
the only Latino who ran
in the Democratic
presidential primary,
says the campaign for
Joe Biden, shown at
bottom at a 9/
ceremony in Shanksville,
Pa., needs to show “a
little bit more support”
for Latino issues.