The Daily Populous Sunday October 27th, 2024 day edition
Authored by miamiherald.com and submitted by winryoma

Politics Kamala Harris ‘is literally everywhere right now.’ Just not in Florida.

Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff gives his remarks during a “Get Out the Early Vote rally at the Austin Hepburn Center at OB Johnson Park & Recreation Center in Hallandale Beach, Florida on Wednesday, October 23, 2024. cjuste@miamiherald.com

Taking the stage at a get-out-the-vote rally in South Florida on Wednesday evening, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff reminded a crowd of eager voters just how busy his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, has been on the campaign trail.

“She is literally everywhere right now,” Emhoff said, shortly after walking out to a marching band rendition of the rapper Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us.” “Tonight, as we speak, she’s going to be in Pennsylvania for a CNN town hall. Make sure you watch it.”

But as the race between Harris and her Republican rival Donald Trump enters the home stretch, the vice president has yet to make a campaign stop in Florida, a longtime swing state that now appears solidly out of reach for the vice president. Since launching her presidential bid in July, she has spent most of her time bouncing between the handful of battleground states that are expected to decide the outcome of the presidential election.

Trump, on the other hand, has maintained a weekly presence in his adopted home state, as of late. Earlier this month, he held a remembrance event for the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel at his Doral golf resort. A week later, he was back in South Florida, fielding questions from Hispanic voters at a Univision town hall. On Tuesday, he participated in a roundtable with conservative Latino leaders, also at his Doral golf club. In between his South Florida stops, he has visited more-competitive states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks during a roundtable discussion with local Latino leaders at Trump National Doral Miami on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024, in Doral, Fla. MATIAS J. OCNER mocner@miamiherald.com

READ MORE: The border is a bigger issue than the economy, Trump tells Hispanic voters in Miami

Trump and Harris’ campaign schedules underscore just how much Florida’s political landscape has changed since the 2020 presidential race, when Trump and President Joe Biden held dueling rallies in the Sunshine State in the final days before Election Day.

Trump ultimately carried Florida in that race, but Biden went on to win the election overall, becoming the first presidential candidate since Bill Clinton in 1992 to clinch the White House without winning Florida and proving that Democrats’ presidential prospects don’t hinge on the Sunshine State as they once had.

The GOP’s advantage in Florida has spurred Harris’ campaign to spend time and money in battleground states where she has a fighting chance, said Cesar Grajales, a Republican political analyst who works for the conservative Libre Initiative.

“They are going to make the decision to focus on the swing states,” Grajales said.

Even with Florida off the battleground map this year, it has still attracted attention from Democrats. Biden attended a pair of high-dollar fundraisers in South Florida in January and has made a handful of stops in the state, including a campaign event in Tampa in April where he assailed Florida’s six-week abortion ban. More recently, he visited the Gulf Coast to survey the damage from back-to-back hurricanes.

Harris has visited Florida a dozen times as vice president, including most recently in May when she traveled to Jacksonville for a speech on reproductive rights. But that was before Biden bowed out of his reelection bid and Harris replaced him as the Democratic presidential nominee.

READ MORE: What Kamala Harris’ 12 visits to Florida as vice president say about her agenda here

She hasn’t been back to Florida since then, but has instead dispatched a series of surrogates to the state. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison spent Monday and Tuesday in Central and North Florida encouraging early voting, while former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a stop in Coral Gables early Tuesday.

Emhoff, who visited Florida on Wednesday, was the latest Harris proxy to stump for his wife in the Sunshine State. Standing in a brightly colored gymnasium in Hallandale Beach, the second gentleman urged voters to cast their ballots early, saying that with enough effort, Democrats could deny Trump the White House once again.

“We cannot have Donald Trump come back. There are so many reasons he’s unfit for any job, let alone president of the United States,” Emhoff said to cheers. “The polls are tight and I know that’s infuriating. I know they shouldn’t be this close and they are. But you know what? We’re going to win this race.”

José Aristimuño, a Democratic political analyst and former deputy director of the Democratic National Committee, said that while Democrats might be able to win Florida eventually, it likely won’t be this year.

“The candidate is the main spokesperson for the campaign, and they have to be in the key states. And 15 days from a dead heat election, it’s much easier to win Michigan than to win Florida,” said Aristimuño.

Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff gives his remarks during a “Get Out the Early Vote rally at the Austin Hepburn Center at OB Johnson Park & Recreation Center in Hallandale Beach, Florida on Wednesday, October 23, 2024. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com

Once the largest and most unpredictable of swing states, Florida’s politics have moved to the right in recent years. Trump carried the state twice, first in 2016 and again in 2020, albeit by relatively narrow margins. Since then, however, Republicans have amassed an advantage in the state of roughly 1 million active voters, while polls have consistently shown Trump leading Harris in Florida.

That hasn’t stopped Trump from holding court in his adopted home state. He held a rally in Doral in July that brought thousands of supporters to his golf resort. Just a couple weeks later, he was in West Palm Beach, attending a conservative political and religious summit put on by the group Turning Point Action.

In October alone, he appeared in South Florida on three separate occasions – two of which were billed as a chance for the former president to court Hispanic voters.

Trump campaign spokesperson Rachel Reisner called Florida “Trump Country.”

“The movement to Make America Great Again is alive and growing, and it starts here in Florida,” she said.

Florida state Rep. Juan Carlos Porras, an early backer of Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, said that the former president’s stops in South Florida offer a way for him to get his message out to Hispanic voters, not just in his home state, but to a broader audience of Latinos nationwide.

“When you talk about Nevada, when you talk about Arizona — even Pennsylvania — these states are going to be the ones that call this election in November,” Porras said. “If we can get this overwhelming support that we see in Florida to transcend to other battleground states, it’s going to be a clear win for the president.”

But Trump’s time in Florida has also coincided with his campaign scrapping several other media appearances and public events. On Tuesday, he canceled a scheduled virtual town hall with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate. Last week, he backed out of a campaign event with the National Rifle Association in Georgia.

José Parra, a Democratic strategist and former aide to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, suggested that Trump’s recent engagements in Doral were a tactic for media attention, adding that it’s a way to mobilize the press because “it’s a market that he knows will cover him.”

Parra and other Democrats have also floated the notion that Trump and his campaign may fear that Florida may be more competitive than previously thought – a sentiment that isn’t reflected in public polling or political spending.

READ MORE: Among Florida’s Hispanic voters, Trump emerging as the clear favorite for president

Florida state Rep. Alex Rizo, the chairman of the Miami-Dade Republican Party, said that Trump’s stops in Florida had less to do with any concern that he could lose his home state in November and more to do with reaching out to certain “segments of the population,” like Latinos and Jewish voters.

“When a president does anything, it’s in global view,” Rizo said. “The lens is focused here, but the message is going out across America and across the world.”

“He’s not worried about losing Florida,” Rizo added. “He’s been coming here, not so much because he needs it to win in Florida, but I think because it becomes such a sounding board and a platform for what he’s done.”

This story was originally published October 23, 2024, 7:53 PM.

Mindless-Look-9952 on October 26th, 2024 at 23:17 UTC »

They probably have internal data that says Florida isn't close enough for them to pour huge amounts of time and money into like the battlegrounds. If their data said it was really close and they had a chance to flip it she'd probably be doing more down there.

341orbust on October 26th, 2024 at 23:14 UTC »

Why would she bother?

The fact she went to Texas, however, is very interesting.

_mort1_ on October 26th, 2024 at 23:12 UTC »

That is a good thing, unlike previous dem nominees, she isn't wasting her time there.