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.

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