{"id":13429,"date":"2023-08-08T16:21:28","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T16:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13429"},"modified":"2023-08-10T19:09:36","modified_gmt":"2023-08-10T19:09:36","slug":"how-biden-flips-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinosreadytovote.org\/?p=13429","title":{"rendered":"How Biden flips Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The state is poised to be a battleground for the first time in years. But strategists say Biden needs to improve Latino outreach to seal it. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Laura Barron-Lopez<\/strong> and <\/em>Marc Caputo<\/em>,<\/strong> POLITICO<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Joe Biden has won with black voters, \nhe\u2019s won in white suburbs, and he\u2019s won with non-college educated white \nvoters so far in the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Biden hasn\u2019t yet demonstrated similar strength among Latinos \u2014 and he\u2019ll need to solve that problem to build on his Arizona primary win and grab the first-in-a-generation chance Democrats have to flip the state this fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n longtime Republican bastion suddenly looks like a top Democratic target\n in 2020, after electing a Democratic senator for the first time in \ndecades during the midterms and becoming a symbol of the suburban shift \ntoward Democrats during the Trump era. Biden\u2019s ability to turn out white\n suburbanites will play a critical role if he hopes to edge out \nPresident Donald Trump for Arizona’s nine electoral votes, which could \nbe decisive in a close 2020 race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While most of the focus on the 2020 \nelectoral map has gone to Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, three \nMidwestern states Trump flipped in 2016, opening up another battleground\n in the Southwest would give Biden more paths to victory in the \nElectoral College. But though Biden has improved among Latino Democrats,\n battling Sanders to a draw in Arizona, according to exit polls, Sanders\n has won the demographic in most primaries and caucuses with exit poll \ndata so far. The numbers show that his campaign has work to do to put \ntogether a coalition to flip Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBiden shouldn’t make the same \nmistakes that the Hillary campaign did,\u201d said Eduardo Sainz, Arizona \nstate director of Mi Familia Vota. \u201cIt is not enough just to think that \nbecause [Latinos] want to get Trump out of office that individuals would\n automatically assume that Biden is better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent Univision poll of Arizona \nvoters showed that 72 percent of Latinos there disapprove of how Trump \nhas handled the presidency. And only 21 percent of Arizona Latinos said \nthey\u2019d vote to re-elect Trump in a Decemberpoll conducted by \nStephanie Valencia, co-founder and president of Equis Labs, which polls \nLatinos in battleground states across the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Biden swept nearly every county in Arizona and Florida’s primaries Tuesday night, Democratic operatives and Latinos in Arizona said the former vice president needs to amp up his persuasion efforts targeting Latinos ahead of November. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Registered Latino voters who don\u2019t \nturn out \u2014 and non-registered voters who are eligible \u2014 vastly outnumber\n the share of Latinos who do vote in Arizona, Valencia said. That means \nBiden \u201chas to have a strategy\u201d that \u201caggressively\u201d engages Latinos, she \nsaid, tapping into the activist infrastructure on the ground to spur \nturnout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe can’t win the election without [Latinos], without motivating each of those sectors,\u201d said Valencia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winning Arizona for a Democrat is a \ndelicate balancing act relying on promoting high Latino turnout and \nsupport without alienating suburban whites who can be turned off by the \npositions advocated by progressive immigration activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of their theories about how you\n win here are wrong,\u201d said Roy Herrera, an adviser to Democrat Mark \nKelly\u2019s Senate campaign, which echoes the moderate messaging of Sinema \nand, to a lesser extent, Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herrera said that Latinos are winnable\n with a moderate message about health care, education and pragmatism. He\n notes that Sinema, criticized by progressive activists for running a \nmoderate campaign that emphasized border security, won Latinos and the \nstate in 2018. But at the same time, fellow Democrat David Garcia lost \nLatinos by 12 points on his way to his defeat at the hands of Republican\n Gov. Doug Ducey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGarcia ran essentially a Bernie \nSanders-type campaign. He ran very far left with the whole \u2018Abolish ICE\u2019\n thing,\u201d Herrera said. \u201cThat is not a position to take here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Republican Kirk Adams, a former state \nHouse speaker who passed the bill, SB 1070, that gave local authorities \nthe ability to detain anyone without a warrant if they were believed to \nhave committed a deportable offense, agreed that Biden had the chance to\n paint Arizona blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen you look at the dynamics of the \n2018 election, at the Ducey-Sinema voter, there clearly is a pathway for\n Biden at the top of the ticket for Democrats to win the presidential \nand possibly even do better in down-ballot races than they have in the \npast,\u201d said Adams, who also served as Ducey\u2019s chief of staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But like Herrera, Adams said Biden \ncould lose his opportunity in the state if he tacks too far left on \nimmigration. And Trump\u2019s campaign quickly seized on Biden\u2019s immigration \npolicies after the most recent Democratic debate, tagging Biden as a \nsupporter of “open borders” in an attempt to promote the false \nimpression that he wants to undo all immigration restrictions. Biden \ndoes not support decriminalizing border crossings, but he has said he \nwould focus his policies on the reunification of families and reverse \nmany of Trump\u2019s draconian policies, including the effective halt on \nasylum-seeking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like most of the Democrats who ran for\n president this election, Biden has embraced providing health care to \nundocumented immigrants, and said his administration would implement a \n100-day moratorium on all deportations to evaluate the sweeping changes \nTrump\u2019s made on the immigration system. After the 100-day halt, Biden \nwould focus on deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed \nfelonies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cristobal Alex, a senior adviser to \nBiden, said Arizona was \u201cground zero\u201d for many of the policies Trump \nlater adopted nationally. Biden\u2019s campaign will highlight Trump\u2019s \ndecision to \u201cpardon America’s most famous racial profiler\u201d former \nMaricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was charged with criminal \ncontempt for defying a judge\u2019s order to stop racially profiled Latinos \nduring patrols. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the Biden campaign will remind Latinos of the \u201cscare tactics\u201d Trump uses frequently, including his pre-midterm gambit in 2018 when he \u201ctalked about a caravan of migrants approaching the border in an attempt to pit Americans against each other and create fear,\u201d said Alex. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s campaign has spent roughly \n$5.7 million on Facebook ads about immigration, his so-called wall, and \nthe border in 2019 and 2020, according to researchers at the Online \nPolitical Transparency Project at New York University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Monmouth poll released Monday backed\n up the notion of Arizona as a budding battleground. Biden led Trump by 3\n points in the poll, 46 to 43 percent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs the Republican party in Arizona \nhas become more characterized by people like Arpaio than by people like \nJohn McCain, that has created a fissure,\u201d said Monmouth University \npollster Patrick Murray. That fissure has driven college-educated white \nvoters toward Democrats. Combine that with an expanding Latino \npopulation activated by battles with Arpaio and the bills like SB 1070, \nand Arizona is \u201cin play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Murray added that it would be \u201cinsane\u201d\n for Democrats not to heavily invest in flipping the state at the \npresidential level. But he said Democrats \u201cneed strong Latino support \nacross the board\u201d to make it happen, and Latino Democrats in the West \nhave favored Sanders so far in the Democratic primary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe question is do they shift and \ntheir enthusiasm carry over into the general election with Biden as the \nnominee?\u201d said Murray. \u201cWe don’t know that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chuck Coughlin, a Republican \nconsultant, said Arizona is winnable for a candidate like Biden because \nof Trump. Pointing to Sinema\u2019s successful campaign and Mark Kelly\u2019s \nsurging Democratic campaign for Senate, Coughlin said moderate Democrats\n have shown they can win Arizona.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in a state with a history of \nelecting women, Coughlin said, Biden could give himself an edge just by \nvirtue of making good on his campaign promise to pick a woman for a \nrunning mate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPicking a Kamala Harris or an Amy Klobuchar would probably help out here,\u201d Coughlin said. \u201cHe could do well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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