In trip to Superior, Wisconsin, Joe Biden looks to regain a key Democratic stronghold

SUPERIOR — As Donald Trump inches closer to capturing the Republican nomination for president, President Joe Biden is returning to an area of the country decimated by industrial outsourcing and emblematic of the fight before him.

Biden on Thursday will visit the Wisconsin border city of Superior in the northwestern corner of the state, across Lake Superior's St. Louis Bay from Duluth, Minn. — two blue communities that used to rely on heavy industry and mining and are now surrounded by an area that has grown more favorable to Trump as those jobs have evaporated.

"This was the rock-solid Democratic core," said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. "Over the last 20 years or so, that stronghold is gone."

Biden will visit Earth Rider Brewery in Superior and plans to discuss how his administration is "rebuilding our infrastructure, lowering costs, spurring a small-business boom, and creating good-paying jobs," according to the White House.

His visit comes days after federal officials announced $1 billion in new funding to replace the 60-year-old Blatnik Bridge on Interstate 535 that connects Superior to Duluth. Funding for the bridge, which spans St. Louis Bay, will come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is part of a $4.9 billion investment toward 37 transportation infrastructure projects across the country that Biden plans to tout during Thursday's visit.

The funding for the projects, which Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg this week called "the next generation of the cathedrals of American infrastructure" that will help shape the economy, also includes $8 million to expand a safety rest stop for trucks on I-90 in Sparta.

The investment for the Blatnik Bridge is the largest of the projects Biden will highlight Thursday. The bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day billions of dollars in freight each year, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

"Jobs are a huge challenge in this part of Minnesota and Wisconsin," Jacobs said. "Trump has used that to his advantage. The protectionism platform that Trump had and has played beautifully to this area. It's just the kind of thing that he can use to appeal to independents and folks who might have been Democrat at one point."

Biden's stop is one of three to Wisconsin from the president or top administration officials just this week — signaling a focus on the battleground state as the 2024 election kicks into gear. Vice President Kamala Harris in a visit to Waukesha County Monday made clear abortion rights would remain central in the race for the White House, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to arrive in Milwaukee Friday to highlight Biden's job-creation efforts.

The president has put recent economic growth and investments in infrastructure at the forefront of his bid to retain the White House, though many Americans, including those in Wisconsin, remain skeptical and have not credited him with the improvements. A Marquette University Law Poll of Wisconsin voters from November found that just 27% of respondents described the economy as “excellent” or “good” while 36% described it as “not so good” and 37% labeled it “poor.”

Still, the economy has improved in the last several months, with the inflation rate receding as the impacts of the COVID pandemic slowly fade. The national unemployment rate has hovered around 3.7%, and in Wisconsin, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.6% at the start of 2021 to 3.3% at the beginning of this year, according to the White House.

Biden and his team, meanwhile, have consistently tried to send that message of improvement and investment directly to voters, largely through stops like Thursday's in Superior.

"We believe that the president is the best messenger," Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "If he can go into a state, a rural area, go into Superior, Wisconsin, talk about a project that we invested in because of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, something that the president fought for… I think that’s important."

Republicans, however, have sought to dispel those notions.

"I hope people have their eyes open and realize what a disaster his governance has been for their lives, their family, their well-being and for this nation," Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson told the Journal Sentinel ahead of Biden's visit.

Biden likely picked the area to motivate Democrats in Duluth, Minnesota's fifth-most populous city where Biden's support remains strong, Jacobs, the University of Minnesota professor, said.

"If Joe Biden is gonna win Minnesota again ... they're going to need Duluth's support and they're going to need good turnout in Duluth" in order to trim support for Trump in the area, he said. Jacobs said coupled with double-digit support Biden received in Wisconsin's Douglas, Bayfield and Ashland counties in 2020, the visit is "a strategic, efficient trip."

Biden carried Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes and carried Minnesota by more than 230,000.

Small Democratic cities like Superior were an ingredient in Trump’s victory in Wisconsin — cities like Janesville, Platteville, Portage, Prairie du Chien, Ashland, Kenosha, Washburn, Beloit, Black River Falls and Baraboo. Trump lost these cities but by less than Republicans did in 2012, which made them a key to his narrow 2016 victory of about 23,000 votes over Hillary Clinton.

But these same communities that were such a disappointment to Democrats could pose a major challenge to Trump’s reelection because these cities have been swinging back toward the Democratic Party since 2016. Many have reverted to their “pre-Trump” voting patterns, performing solidly for Democrats in the 2018 midterms and in more recent elections as well.

"He can kind of take these two isolated blue islands in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin and try to start building support and mobilizing voters," Jacobs said.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: In trip to Superior, Biden looks to regain a key Democratic stronghold