Biden plans to campaign in Little Haiti and Little Havana before national town hall in Miami
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden plans to make campaign stops in two important South Florida communities, Little Haiti and Little Havana, on Monday as he visits one of the closest battleground states in the presidential election.
Monday night, he will appear in a nationally televised town hall originating from Miami.
The Florida trip is only the second Biden visit to the state in 2020. Campaign stops leading up to the state’s March primary were canceled as the coronavirus pandemic began. After he began stepping up in-person campaigning, Biden visited Tampa and Kissimmee on Sept. 15.
Given the length of time it takes to fly from Delaware to Miami, the Biden campaign is maximizing his time in South Florida with the stops in Little Haiti and Little Havana.
Florida awards 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. As it is in almost every election — Trump won by 1.2 percentage points in 2016 — it’s ultra close. A New York Times/Siena College poll of likely Florida voters released Saturday found Biden leading Trump, 47% to 42%.
The audience for the NBC town hall, at which he’ll answer questions from socially distanced undecided Florida voters, is national. It originates from outside the Pérez Art Museum at 8 p.m.
In Little Havana, Biden is expected to discuss his plans for rebuilding the economy. Biden’s theme is usually called “Build Back Better,” but on Monday he plans to offer a South Florida twist: “Reconstruir Mejor.”
The former vice president is expected to talk about dealing with COVID-19 as a key to recovering from the jobs crisis — with emphasis on unemployment in the Black and Hispanic communities and in the state’s vital tourism industry, which has been hobbled by pandemic-caused reluctance to travel.
The Times/Siena poll helps explain where Biden is campaigning.
“While Trump wins among white voters, 52-38 percent, Biden has a commanding 75-5 percent lead with Black voters and leads among Latino voters, 58-34 percent,” Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute, said in a written statement.
The Cuban American community is largely Republican. And Trump has taken the kind of traditional, hardline stands on Cuba that are especially popular with older Cuban Americans. Trump reversed much of the normalization of relations with Cuba implemented by former President Barack Obama, whom Biden served as vice president.
A highly regarded poll of Cuban Americans in Miami-Dade County, conducted periodically for almost 30 years by Florida International University, shows Trump leading Biden 59% to 25%.
But as FIU polls have shown in the past, there are differences between younger and older Cuban Americans and also among those born in the U.S. and those who immigrated.
For example, among Cubans who immigrated to the U.S. before 1995, Trump leads Biden 71% to 18%. Among those who were not born in Cuba, it’s closer, with Trump leading 46% to 37%.
Haitian Americans are largely Democratic. But leading Florida Republicans have spent years courting the Haitian community, and in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to be Haitian Americans' “biggest champion.”
The Trump Administration hasn’t wanted to renew temporary protected status, or TPS, a humanitarian program that has allowed Haitians to legally live and work in the U.S. after a series of calamities befell their country.
And in 2018, it was widely reported the president used a vulgarity to describe people from Haiti and African nations, though Trump and the White House later denied he applied the term to Haiti.
Last week, the Biden campaign launched advertising campaigns focused on the English-speaking Caribbean community and on Creole-speaking Haitian Americans.
Jill Biden will accompany her husband in the stops in Little Haiti and Little Havana. Later, she’ll break away for a Women for Biden rally in Boca Raton.
Trump, who is hospitalized with coronavirus, has been in Florida much more. On Sept. 25, he held a Latinos for Trump event in Doral. On Sept. 24, he held a rally in Jacksonville. And on Sept. 8, he visited Jupiter and proclaimed himself “a great environmentalist.”
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
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