At a time when Democrats converge on Miami this week for the first debates ahead of the 2020 presidential election, the Democratic Party is trying to counter efforts to impede President Donald Trump’s re-election with a message aimed at criticizing the candidates.
Many prominent Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, are expected to arrive in Miami this week to hold fundraising activities, launch the national campaign’s coalition of Hispanics and hold activities outside the venue. It’s an important reminder based on past elections: Florida can decide the 2020 election by a hair’s breadth.
Republican officials plan to use this week’s activities to highlight low unemployment and economic momentum, reaffirm their aggressive stance against the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, and court the exile community in Miami.
The day before the debates, Pence travels to Miami to launch the “Latinos for Trump” coalition with the deputy governor of Florida, Jeanette Núñez, who will be the national co-president of that campaign.
The Federated Republican Women of North Dade group will conduct a two-day activity called “Rally for Americans Opposing the Wave of Socialism in the 2020 Presidential Campaign” in front of the Arsht Center as discussions unfold.
Nelson Diaz, president of the Miami-Dade Republicans, said the activities are also expected to include a small fundraising activity on Wednesday night with Sean Spicer, a former White House press secretary who has been promoting a book about the time he worked with Trump.
It is expected that other campaign officials of the president, such as his campaign manager, Brad Parscale, also appear this week in South Florida.
Trump has made it clear that he thinks a victory in re-election goes through Florida. The president officially launched his re-election campaign last week in Orlando, Florida.
“I am delighted to return to my second home,” he told the 20,000 attendees, citing his many visits to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.
And then he said: “In many ways, I think I can say it’s my first house. It’s the great state of Florida. ”
Florida also decisively supported Trump in 2016, helping to secure his triumph over Hillary Clinton. And although the midterm elections of 2018 resulted in a wave of Democratic victories in other states, Republicans in some careers in Florida improved their 2016 margins: they kept the governorship in a race observed throughout the country and won another seat in the federal Senate with the candidacy of former governor Rick Scott.
Democrats are trying to play defensively against Trump’s campaign to win the vote of Hispanics, focusing on the president’s tax issues, his agenda on medical services and various immigration policies, such as the recent passage of a law which prohibits the so-called sanctuary cities.
But they are still recovering from a weak effort in the mid-term elections of 2018 that ended in a turnout to the polls worse than expected by Hispanics.
At least in Miami-Dade, a Democratic-majority region, Trump’s victory among Hispanics, the county’s largest demographic, is unlikely. Although the political inclination of Hispanic communities varies greatly, they tend to lean toward the Democrats. But Diaz said Republicans are more interested in reducing the Democratic lead than in winning a majority.
“You do not need counties, it’s a race to win votes,” he added. “Our goal is to win the majority of votes, as many as possible … If it had not been for the votes of Cuban-Americans, DeSantis would not have won .”
State Sen. Joe Gruters, who chairs the Florida Republican Party and was co-chair of the Trump campaign in the state in 2016, added that Trump now has all the Republican machinery in his favor in his capacity as party leader, while that the Democrats face a protracted and complicated primary with so many candidates.
“The Democrats are divided, they have 23 candidates in the race,” said Gruters. “On the Republican side, we are united with the president and the successes he has achieved despite the difficulties … We are coordinating all the forces to show that we can compete on the basis of what we have already created.”
And it does not hurt either that Florida’s new governor, Ron DeSantis, owes part of his trump in elementary to Trump’s enthusiastic support from the start. Gruters said the party “is focused on Trump and DeSantis,” and argued that DeSantis – who is said to have presidential aspirations in the future – will help Florida vote for Trump in November 2020.
