Joe Biden kicks off Florida push as Trump sidelined by COVID

While President Trump and his campaign suffered one disaster after another last week, Democratic rival Joe Biden's team was preparing for a final, four-week push to win Florida.

The homestretch dash will have an unofficial kick-off of sorts Monday when the former vice president appears at a televised town hall in Miami while his spouse, Jill Biden, joins a Women for Biden drive-in rally in Boca Raton.

"Florida is always a razor close state but Biden is in a good position to win here," Biden Florida state director Jackie Lee said last week.

Team Biden's Florida aspirations got a measure of validation Saturday from a new poll showing the former vice president holding a five-point lead over the incumbent president in the Sunshine State.

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By contrast, Trump's re-election bid suffered a series of damaging setbacks in the past seven days.

On Sept. 27, the New York Times dropped a bombshell report, based on access to years of Trump's tax returns, that showed the president paid next nothing in taxes some years and was on the hook for massive amounts in debt.

Two days later, following his debate encounter with Biden, Trump was widely criticized for repeatedly interrupting Biden and encouraging a militant far-right group rather than condemning white supremacists.

Then there were the embarrassing audio recordings in which first lady Melania Trump was heard speaking callously about immigrant children separated from parents at the border and disparaging having to put up Christmas decorations. And the report that Fox News paid millions to quell sexual harassment claims against, Kimberly Guilfoyle, a top Trump fundraiser and Donald Trump Jr.'s girlfriend, when Guilfoyle worked at the network.

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Most alarming was the president's hospitalization Friday after testing positive for COVID-19 and becoming symptomatic.

That stunning turn of events was followed by revelations that Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel, presidential adviser Chris Christie and ally Kellyanne Conway had also tested positive for coronavirus and were quarantining.

"For people that pay attention to this stuff, this has been probably the worst week of Trump's political career in a lot of ways," said Michael Binder, director of the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida. "For folks that maybe aren't as tuned in, I think that the debate really is what got their attention."

It's hard to guess, Binder said, if the COVID infection will "change the arc of the election" though "it's hard to overlook the irony of him saying that this isn't a big deal."

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Binder's team has a poll coming out Tuesday, and he said he suspects Biden has the advantage though "not by much."

Still, besides yielding the campaign spotlight entirely to Biden, the president's infection also reinserted the coronavirus pandemic -- and Trump's own behavior -- as the number one topic before voters. COVID-19 now overshadows law and order and cultural war issues the president has hammered at to close the gap with Biden.

Biden's Florida strategy for the final 30 days leading up to the Nov. 3 election were spelled out in a six-page memo the campaign issued last week to counter Trump's planned rally Friday near Orlando -- an event subsequently scrapped because of the president's illness.

The memo states Biden will hit Trump for botching the pandemic as both a public health and economic crisis. A Biden administration, the paper said, would "elevate the voices of scientists, public health experts, and first responders" to "get the virus under control."

The Biden camp will also tout an economic plan that would create more than 18 million new jobs -- and that Moody’s Analytics said would generate 7 million more jobs than Trump's approach.

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Highlights include helping Florida small businesses "keep workers on the job" with short-time compensation that allows "struggling firms to reduce workers’ hours while still paying them full wages and health benefits during crisis times -- with the federal government picking up the difference in cost."

Biden's plan also calls for "enhanced COVID unemployment insurance" and an overhaul of the Paycheck Protection Program to guarantee every qualifying small business with 50 employees or fewer gets relief.

It would also "provide housing relief for renters, homeowners, and mom-and-pop landlords," boost Social Security by $200 per month for seniors and persons with disabilities and increase SNAP benefits for low-income recipients by 15 percent during the recession.

And it would build on Obamacare by automatically enrolling the more than 800,000 Floridians eligible for Medicaid.

Another Team Biden memo, released early last week, said Democrats would tap "growing strength in the Florida suburbs." That strategy paper pointed to localities like Duval and Seminole Counties that flipped blue in 2018" as well as even mining votes in ruby red bastions like Sumter County, home to the staunchly conservative The Villages community.

The paper said the campaign is counting on a "strong and diverse coalition" and that it is "aggressively pursuing the Hispanic vote, maximizing Black turnout, and increasing support with seniors." And that it is wooing "Black families in Duval, Puerto Ricans in Kissimmee, suburban families in the I-4 corridor, Haitians and Cubans in Miami, Jewish retirees in West Palm Beach, and Republicans in Fort Myers."

Biden's push to the finish line was bolstered on Saturday by the New York Times/Sienna College survey of voters that showed Biden leading Trump, 47% to 42%, in the Sunshine State.

Still, a Trump ally in Palm Beach County said it would be foolish to count the president out in Florida.

"This has always been a grassroots president," Peter Feaman, GOP national committeeman, said last week. "The whole emphasis of the campaign in Florida has been knocking on doors, phone calls, person-to-person contact and going into communities Republicans have not gone to before, and that will continue."

Despite being sidelined by the coronavirus, Trump can still lean on his overwhelming popularity among Florida Republicans and a deep GOP surrogate bench in the state.

Trump can count on Gov. Ron DeSantis, Lt. Gov. Jeannette Nuñez and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. He also has regional players, from U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz of Pensacola to U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart in Miami.

When Biden takes the stage Monday, he will do so in a city where a major voting bloc, Cuban-Americans, appear solidly in the president's corner -- so much so that it helped Trump cut into the lead Biden has enjoyed.

The latest Florida International University Cuba Poll, released on Friday, said Cuban-Americans largely support Trump's handling of key issues including the economy, Cuba policy, immigration, health care and China policy.

"The reason Cuban Americans support is because they are, largely, Republicans and Republicans nationally give Trump a 90% approval rating," said Guillermo Grenier, chair of FIU's Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies.

"The Republican Party has always been good, since Reagan, at talking to Cubans," he said. "They made Cubans feel very important."

In addition, many Cuban-Americans own or are employed by small- and medium-sized businesses, so Republican Party platforms pledging to lower taxes and cut regulations are appealing. That also goes for younger and new arrivals from Cuba that, Grenier said, are also registering with the GOP.

"They see the GOP as the party that is supposed to be good for jobs, good for this, good for that," he said.

Grenier also noted the GOP has invested a lot in South Florida to court Cubans and other Hispanics.

"When Republicans talk to Cubans ... they were talking to Cubans about health care, the economy," Grenier added. "They didn't build a Cuban base talking to Cubans and about Cuba. And the Democrats haven't gotten that."

Last week, a spokeswoman for Florida Trump Victory, the president's campaign, scoffed at the idea that Trump would lose Florida's 29 electoral votes to Biden.

But Trump clearly was investing plenty of time, money and energy to keep Florida red in November.

In September, Trump campaigned twice in Florida, including a Latinos or Trump roundtable in Doral on Sept. 25. He was scheduled for another visit before he ended up at the Walter Reed medical complex.

Trump's full court press across Florida appeared to close the gap in the polls that Biden has enjoyed since winning the nomination.

UNF's Binder said the one thing he's sure about is whoever wins Florida will do so by a narrow margin.

"If somebody wins Florida by two points it's a landslide," pollster Binder. This is always going to be a close state. This is going to be a close state forever."

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Joe Biden kicks off Florida push as Trump sidelined by COVID

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