Florida’s lost its battleground sheen. Biden is courting its Hispanic voters anyway

President Joe Biden’s campaign isn’t ready to give up on Florida just yet.

Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband and a top Biden campaign surrogate, joined Florida Democratic officials in Coral Gables on Wednesday to launch the campaign’s Hispanic outreach initiative, Latinos con Biden-Harris, in Florida.

The rollout came just over a week after the campaign launched similar efforts in a handful of other states, including Arizona, Nevada and Texas. The goal is to mobilize and train Hispanic supporters on the campaign’s messaging and encourage those voters to head to the polls in November.

The program’s launch is the latest sign that Biden’s team hasn’t entirely abandoned the idea of winning Florida in November, despite a years-long rough patch for Democrats in the state and growing signs that its vast Hispanic electorate may be realigning itself with the Republican Party.

“It doesn’t have to be this way and it’s not going to be this way, because we’re going to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Emhoff said. “We’re going to win Florida.”

The Latinos con Biden announcement also doubled as the opening for the Miami-Dade Democratic Hispanic Caucus’ new office. Joining Emhoff in the cramped office space on Miracle Mile were Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Nikki Fried, Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and Juan Cuba, president of the county’s Democratic Hispanic Caucus.

Cuba said Wednesday’s announcement in Coral Gables proves that “Florida is definitely still in play” for Biden. He acknowledged that Democrats have lost ground in Florida in recent years — most notably in 2022, when Gov. Ron DeSantis won a staggering 19-point reelection victory — but insisted there’s still time to roll back, or at least shrink, the GOP’s gains.

“What we’re going to see in this cycle is Florida’s always been a state — except in ’22 — where elections are decided in the margins,” said Cuba, a former Miami-Dade County Democratic Party chairman.

A steep climb for Biden

Barring a monumental shift in the state’s political landscape sometime in the next few months, Biden’s allies acknowledge that Florida is unlikely to see the kind of attention and investment from the president’s campaign that battlegrounds like Georgia, Nevada or Pennsylvania are set to receive.

It is exceedingly expensive to campaign in and advertise in Florida, they note, and the Hispanic population is more politically fragmented, and often more conservative, than in most other states. Some experts have described a broad political realignment toward the GOP among Florida Hispanic voters — one that has been accelerated by what some Democrats say is a lack of serious effort and investment by their party and its candidates.

“[Hispanic voters] have changed here, but I think part of the reason they’ve changed is because the Republicans have the Hispanic electorate to themselves,” said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic pollster who worked on former President Barack Obama’s successful 2012 campaign.

Florida’s recent political history, including DeSantis’ outsized win in 2022 over Democrat Charlie Crist and the GOP’s expanding voter-registration advantage — about 850,000 people — has also made other states more appealing targets, said John Morgan, an attorney and longtime Democratic donor.

“I think North Carolina has a better chance of Biden winning than Florida,” Morgan said. “That’s just where we are in today’s politics. But Florida is still purple. People may not believe it because of Desantis’ rout of Charlie Crist, but I believe that was more a moment in time.”

In a telling sign of where the Biden campaign’s priorities lie, his campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodriguez released a memo this week naming Georgia and North Carolina as the two most critical states in the southern United States. Florida — once a coveted target for presidential candidates from both parties — wasn’t mentioned once.

Still, Democrats say they have reasons to stay hopeful.

Fried, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, told reporters last week that she had gotten “complete confirmation” from the Biden campaign and national Democratic groups that they’ll put money into trying to win Florida.

The Biden campaign rolled out a $30 million ad buy earlier this month targeting battleground states, as well as Black and Latino voters. Some of that money will be spent in Florida.

One digital ad hitting former President Donald Trump over his efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act — the landmark healthcare law signed by Obama — began running in Florida over the weekend, with a large part of the ad buy targeting Miami-Dade County, according to a Biden campaign spokesperson.

Florida Democrats believe one of the most influential factors in the November election will be a state ballot measure that would safeguard abortion access in Florida. The Florida Supreme Court has until Monday to decide whether the language of that measure complies with state law.

If the court allows the measure to appear on the November ballot, Democrats say that it could juice voter turnout and ultimately help their candidates by making abortion rights a central theme of the election.

“It’s an important ballot initiative for Floridians. Period,” Cuba said. “I think where Florida has seen progress on issues, whether it’s this decision on abortion or raising the minimum wage or restoring rights, it’s been through the ballot box. I’m optimistic that it’ll also show what’s really at stake in this election.”