‘I need you back’: Biden visits western states in effort to firm up Latino vote

Joe Biden is on a three-day western US election campaign swing through Nevada, Arizona and Texas with a focus on personally appealing to Latino voters, saying they are the reason he defeated Donald Trump in 2020 and urging them to help him do it again in November.

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“I need you back,” he told several dozen supporters packed into a local Mexican restaurant in Phoenix, Arizona. And in an interview with the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision he blasted Trump as someone whose hardline policies and biased rhetoric are hostile to Hispanic voters.

“This guy despises Latinos,” he told the TV channel. Biden was making appearances in Arizona on Wednesday then heading to Texas on Thursday, three weeks after he was at the Texas-Mexico border to talk about immigration in a region where Democrats have had some disappointing results in recent elections.

Biden said the upcoming presidential election isn’t a referendum on him but a choice between “me and a guy named Trump” who campaigns by accusing people coming to the US from Mexico of being rapists and, in recent weeks, saying that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Biden said Hispanic unemployment is the lowest it has been in a long time because of his policies, highlighted administration initiatives to help small businesses and reduce gun violence, and criticized Trump for wanting more tax cuts for rich people.

“He wants to get rid of all the programs we put together,” Biden said.

Democrats’ latest efforts are crucial as key parts of Biden’s base, such as Black and Hispanic people, have become increasingly disenchanted with his performance in office.

In an AP-NORC poll conducted in February, 38% approved of how Biden was handling his job. Nearly six in 10 Black people (58%) approved, compared with 36% of Hispanic people. Black people are more likely than white and Hispanic people to approve of Biden, but that approval has dropped in the three years since Biden took office.

In Reno, Nevada, on Wednesday, the US president said he and Trump have a “different value set” and added: “I never heard a president say the things that he has said.”

Nevada is among the roughly half-dozen battlegrounds that will determine the next president, and Washoe county is the lone swing county in the state.

“We’re going to beat him again,” Biden said of Trump.

Afterward, Biden flew to Las Vegas to promote his administration’s housing policies. In Phoenix on Wednesday, he will discuss his support of the computer chip manufacturing sector.

Tuesday’s appearances coincided with the launch of Latinos con Biden-Harris (Spanish for “Latinos with Biden-Harris”).

Biden noted that Trump recently said migrants are “animals” and not people, and that the presumptive Republican nominee for the White House this November has pledged to carry out mass deportations.

“We have to stop this guy, we can’t let this happen,” Biden said. “We are a nation of immigrants.”

The Republican National Committee accused Democrats of taking the Hispanic community for granted.

“Republicans will continue receiving with open arms thousands of Hispanics that are moving to our party, disappointed with Democrats and their policies, and will be fundamental to Republican victories all over the country in 2024,” said Jaime Florez, the party’s director of Hispanic outreach.

The Associated Press contributed reporting