President Biden on Tuesday began a tour through Nevada and Arizona by championing his economic policies and making a sharp-elbowed pitch to the crucial Hispanic electorate in the two battleground states, saying that former President Donald J. Trump, his Republican rival, “despises Latinos.”
Mr. Biden is seeking to use the trip this week through the Sun Belt to turn what polls have shown to be three of his biggest weaknesses — the economy, immigration and slipping support among Latinos — into strengths. The visit comes as the president has adopted an aggressive new tone as he opens the general election campaign against Mr. Trump.
As he traveled to Reno, Nev., and Las Vegas on Tuesday, Mr. Biden made clear his campaign has its eye on Latino voters, who are increasingly gravitating toward Mr. Trump, recent polls have found.
“This guy despises Latinos,” Mr. Biden said in an interview with Univision Radio that aired on Tuesday as he criticized Mr. Trump’s economic policies and proposals to launch mass deportations. “I understand Latino values.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks, among the most strident the president has made toward Mr. Trump on the subject, highlighted the fierce battle for an increasingly up-for-grabs voting bloc. And they illustrated the stakes for the president and his party if Latinos turn away from them, a shift that would threaten to unravel the diverse coalition that has delivered Democrats the White House, as well as a plethora of House and Senate seats, in recent years.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, accused Mr. Biden of caring more “about illegal immigrant criminals than American citizens.”
“President Trump will secure the southern border and deport illegal criminals to protect ALL American citizens,” Ms. Leavitt said in a statement.
Latino voters are particularly crucial in states like Nevada and Arizona, where they make up roughly one in four eligible voters and where Mr. Biden won in 2020. But Mr. Trump has found support in the diverse Latino electorate, including among evangelicals and those focused on border security. He has appealed in particular to those without college degrees, an educational divide that has captured the attention of the White House.
Surveys show Mr. Trump winning more than 40 percent of Latino voters, a level not achieved by a Republican in two decades. Some polls even show Mr. Trump ahead of Mr. Biden among Latino voters after Mr. Biden won nearly 60 percent of their vote in 2020.
“People like to be entertained and sometimes Donald Trump, what he does is it provides that entertainment. People like laugh at his rallies, you know, it’s like they’re going to a circus,” Arizona Democratic Party chairwoman Yolanda Bejarano told reporters in Phoenix, Arizona, on Tuesday. “We just need to be very, very focused and you know, make sure that Latinos understand exactly who Donald Trump is and what a danger he presents to us.”
Mr. Biden’s campaign aides believe they can contrast the president with his predecessor by homing in not just on issues like abortion and the economy but also on what the president’s aides once viewed as a political vulnerability: immigration and the border. In a memo written by Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, his approach on immigration is listed as a primary way to “contrast on the issues that matter most to Western voters.”
In the interview with Univision, Mr. Biden attacked Mr. Trump’s comments saying migrants are “not people.” He also said Mr. Trump was to blame for encouraging Republicans to sink legislation that would have imposed sweeping restrictions at the southwestern border, partly to avoid providing Mr. Biden an election-year win.
“He says immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood’ of this country, separated children from parents at the border, caged the kids, planned mass deportations systems,” Mr. Biden said. “We have to stop this guy. We can’t let this happen. We are a nation of immigrants.”
While Mr. Biden has recently shifted his language around immigration to the right, he also emphasized his efforts to provide undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.
John Tuman, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who focuses on the Latino electorate, said that was necessary in a state with voters interested in hearing about reforming the overall immigration system.
“It pays dividends politically to push immigration from the margins to the center,” Mr. Tuman said.
But Andrea Masnata, a 34-year-old Nevada resident who immigrated from Bolivia, said she and many Latino peers were not enthused with either candidate. She had also noticed Latinos increasingly becoming disengaged with the Democratic Party, said Ms. Masnata, the communications director for Make the Road Action in Nevada, a grass-roots group of Latinos and other working-class people of color.
“It’s a clear statement of the disappointment the community has,” Ms. Masnata said, adding that many of her peers were concerned about grocery and housing prices, and the administration using immigration as a political talking point. “They know we have one option that is less threatening to our community, but they don’t feel backed by President Biden, either.”
Like the overall electorate in Nevada, Mr. Tuman said, Latino voters want to see progress on the economy, including job growth and lower housing costs.
Mr. Biden visited Washoe County, the home of Reno and Nevada’s lone swing county, where he said Mr. Trump would work to undo the Biden administration’s agenda. At the same time, his campaign kicked off a program called Latinos con Biden-Harris, which will organize Latino voters in battleground states with significant Hispanic communities, including Nevada, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Wisconsin. It will focus on Mexican Americans, Venezuelan Americans and Puerto Ricans.
Mr. Biden later traveled to Stupak Community Center in Las Vegas, where he spoke of his efforts to cut housing costs.
In a sign of how the White House hoped his economic message would appeal to Latino voters, Mr. Biden was introduced by Juan Pablo Leos Soria, a member of a union for plasterers and cement masons, who rallied the crowd by saying he was on his way to soon buying a home.
“I know he’s making this a reality for so many people just like me,” Mr. Leos Soria said.
But Mr. Biden can do little to change mortgage rates — they are heavily influenced by the Federal Reserve. The average 30-year mortgage rate jumped to nearly 8 percent last fall from below 3 percent in 2021. It now sits just under 7 percent.
Mr. Biden once again called on Congress to pass a mortgage relief credit that would give first-time homeowners a $10,000 tax credit. He promoted his coronavirus stimulus plan, which invested $1 billion in Nevada to help provide affordable housing and lower housing costs. And he said his new budget proposal would include a $20 billion grant fund for affordable housing.
Mr. Biden later traveled to a Mexican restaurant in Phoenix and brought with him a blunt message.
“You’re the reason why in large part I beat Donald Trump,” Mr. Biden said at an event meant to rally Latino voters. “I need you badly.”
The post Biden, Vying for Hispanic Voters in Nevada, Says Trump ‘Despises Latinos’ appeared first on New York Times.
