President Biden plans to visit Nevada and Arizona this week to promote his economic policies and attack Republicans on immigration and abortion as he tries to shore up an important but wavering Latino electorate in the two battleground states.
Mr. Biden will begin his trip on Tuesday in Reno, Nevada, where he plans to tout his economic agenda and denounce former President Donald J. Trump over abortion rights. He then plans to travel to Las Vegas to tout his efforts to lower housing costs before heading to Phoenix on Wednesday, where he will make a production announcement. Mr. Biden will then travel to Texas for campaign events.
The aim of the trip is to turn three of Mr. Biden’s biggest weaknesses, according to polls – the economy, immigration and dwindling Latino support – into strengths, at a time when the president is taking an aggressive stance in the general’s inauguration The election campaign against Mr. Trump has struck a new tone.
Mr. Biden will particularly keep an eye on Latino voters who are increasingly drawn to Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden’s campaign is airing two interviews with the president on radio stations aimed at Latino audiences, launching an organizing program to rally Latino voters and slamming Republicans for restricting abortion rights and passing a bipartisan, action-packed immigration package Tightening border security attacked.
“The Latino vote was crucial to the president’s victory in 2020, and 2024 will be no different,” Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “Our community has deep roots in the organization, and we are excited to use these skills to fight for our families, our communities and against Donald Trump’s anti-Latino agenda.”
Democrats have relied on Latino voters in recent years, particularly in states like Nevada and Arizona, which could tip the balance in the 2024 presidential election. Latinos make up about one in four eligible voters in Arizona and Nevada – states where Mr. Biden won in 2020. But Mr. Trump has found support among many in the diverse Latino electorate, including evangelicals and those focused on border security. Mr. Trump has particularly targeted Latinos without college degrees, an education gap that has drawn the attention of the White House.
Polls show Mr. Trump winning more than 40 percent of Latino voters, a figure no Republican has reached in two decades. Some polls even show Mr. Trump ahead of Mr. Biden among Latino voters, after Mr. Biden won nearly 60 percent of their vote in 2020.
Mr. Biden’s campaign aides say they are ready to go on the offensive on an issue that has traction in both states and was once seen as a policy weak spot in the White House: immigration and the border. A memo written by Ms. Chávez Rodríguez lists Mr. Biden’s approach to immigration as a key way to “provide contrast with the issues that matter most to Western voters.”
“President Biden negotiated the toughest and fairest reforms to secure the border in decades – only for Donald Trump to tell his MAGA Republican allies to block these efforts to help Trump politically,” Ms. Chávez Rodríguez says in the memo.
But in a sign of how complex immigration policy can be, Mr. Biden also needs to strike a balance between discussing border security measures and emphasizing his efforts to find a path to citizenship, said John Tuman, a political science professor at the University of Nevada , Las Vegas, which focuses on the Latino electorate.
While Mr. Biden has recently made a rightward shift on the immigration issue, many voters in Nevada are also interested in hearing about reform of the entire immigration system, Mr. Tuman said.
“It pays politically to push immigration from the margins to the center,” Tuman said. He said Mr. Biden could talk about the young undocumented immigrants, known as Dreamers, and the program to protect them, “while recognizing that there must be trade-offs in border security.”
And like the entire Nevada electorate, Mr. Tuman said, Latino voters want to see progress in the economy, including job growth and lower housing costs.
During his housing speech in Las Vegas, Mr. Biden will again call on Congress to pass a mortgage relief credit that would give first-time homeowners a $10,000 tax credit. But Mr Biden can do little to change mortgage rates – they are heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. The average 30-year mortgage rate rose last fall from under 3 percent to nearly 8 percent in 2021. This year it has fallen slightly, but has recently risen again and is now almost 7 percent.
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2024-03-19 14:22:06
www.nytimes.com
