Biden, Harris step up drive to win battleground Wisconsin while taking side trips to fundraise in Illinois

WASHINGTON — If you wonder about the timing of President Joe Biden fundraising in Chicago on Wednesday — with Vice President Kamala Harris collecting campaign cash at a North Shore reception aimed at women donors May 16 — the reason is simple.

Chicago is a short hop from Milwaukee and Racine in battleground state Wisconsin.

Biden and Harris each will be making their fourth visit to Wisconsin this election year — Biden in Racine on Wednesday and Harris in Milwaukee next week, the same day as her reception in north suburban Chicago.

If the Democratic convention were not taking place in Chicago this August, there would be almost no presidential attention paid to blue state Illinois, except for fundraising. Illinois has backed Democrats for president since 1992.

It’s another world over the border in Wisconsin.

The Biden-Harris team and the Wisconsin Democratic Coordinated Campaign have a massive operation: 46 offices and more than 80 staffers on the ground. With most Black voters — and other key Democratic constituencies — in southeast Wisconsin, the Biden-Harris Wisconsin team headquarters is in Milwaukee.

Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in Wisconsin, and Biden beat Trump by a smidgen there in 2020, with each contest decided by less than 1 percent of the vote.

 Top Biden-Harris campaign officials — principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, a former top political adviser to Gov. J.B. Pritzker; battleground states director Dan Kanninen; and communications director Michael Tyler— briefed reporters Tuesday about the campaign’s focus this month on the key swing states where a relatively small number of voters will decide who wins the White House this November.

They noted the lack of a Trump ground game in Wisconsin and other states.

“The general election has just started to crystallize for voters across the country,” Fulks said. “And we’re taking advantage of the moment to meet them where they are.”

Said Kanninen, in the battleground states, by “the end of this month, we will have at least 200 offices and 500 staff. Our battleground presence reflects our core strategy. We know that to win in this election, we need to reach both the traditional swing voters, as well as the diverse communities that have historically made up our Democratic base.”

Racine is a very intentional choice.

In 2018, Trump, with much fanfare, traveled there for the groundbreaking ceremony to mark the construction — with heavy government subsidies — of a plant for the Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn. Foxconn fizzled. It’s one of Trump’s biggest economic flops. The 13,000 promised jobs never happened; just about 1,000 are employed.

Biden will highlight a $3.3 billion investment by Microsoft to build an artificial intelligence data center in Racine — on parts of the same land Foxconn was supposed to occupy. Biden will be talking about 2,300 union construction jobs and eventually 2,000 permanent positions.

In Milwaukee, Harris will highlight the success of the administration’s economic agenda as part of her Economic Opportunity Tour, promoting the investments made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Biden-Harris campaign focus on Wisconsin Black voters

Garren Randolph, the Wisconsin Democratic Coordinated Campaign manager, said in a memo to “interested parties” that Biden, in addition to attending the Microsoft event, “will make a campaign stop to speak with Black voters about the stakes of this election.

“Ahead of the president’s arrival, attendees at the campaign event will participate in a training on how to use an app, REACH, that helps voters connect with people they already know about the importance of the election in November. Over the last several months, REACH has been used successfully by Team Biden-Harris supporters and volunteers in the Black community as part of a first-of-its-kind relational organizing program in Milwaukee.”

 The Biden campaign — and this strategy is not new among campaigns in this era — is often bypassing mainstream legacy news organizations, favoring outlets with specialized audiences. That’s why Biden appeared on the Howard Stern show recently. In Wisconsin, Biden, Harris and top surrogates have given interviews to hosts of radio shows targeting Black listeners.

Democrat-allied groups get Chicago convention preview

Also on Wednesday, some 150 representatives of Democrat-allied groups will be in Chicago for a briefing on the convention at the United Center, where the official convention business will take place Aug. 19-22. Democratic National Convention Committee Chair Minyon Moore and Joe Myhra, United Center senior vice president for operations and administration will be briefing.

Among the Democrat-allied groups at the briefing with be representatives of the AFL-CIO, Everytown for Gun Safety, Reproductive Freedom for All, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.