President Trump’s campaign has redeployed to the field to woo voters in person despite a summer coronavirus surge as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s team wagers that people scarred by the pandemic prefer virtual engagement.
On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence traveled to Iowa, a swing state where Trump and Biden are running even. On Sunday, senior Trump campaign official Mercedes Schlapp is to headline a Women for Trump bus tour event in Wisconsin, another battleground where the president trails. Those stops account for just two of the more than half-dozen, in-person visits to key states organized by the Trump campaign this past week.
This direct contact with voters, an approach that has included a return to in-person door-knocking and peer-to-peer advocacy by Republican field operatives, stands in sharp contrast to the Biden campaign’s strategy. Even with the addition of running mate Kamala Harris, a California senator, the former vice president is sticking with the robust, virtual voter turnout operation he adopted in March when the coronavirus halted traditional, in-person campaigning.
“The Trump-Pence ticket is leading by example, showing Americans that they can safely and securely reopen,” Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso said. “Biden and Harris continue to fear-monger from behind closed doors. It’s not controversial to say the American voters deserve to connect with both campaigns as they try to win their support.”
Buoyed by Biden’s substantial lead in national polls and a summer-long advantage in battleground state surveys, Democrats are embracing the comparison, confident Biden’s resistance to in-person campaigning is a political asset. Voters are dissatisfied with Trump’s management of the coronavirus, and Democratic officials say Biden’s commitment to contactless campaigning and decision to keep his ground troops on a virtual footing reassures voters that Biden is serious about defeating the pandemic.
“Sending a masked organizer to knock on a stranger’s door in the middle of a raging pandemic is not an effective or safe use of the coordinated campaign’s resources,” said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.
The DNC is partnering with the Biden campaign to identify and turn out voters through a mixture of telephone calls and text messaging, tactics the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee continue to embrace in states where the rate of coronavirus infections makes traditional engagement with voters in the field impractical. Last week, the Trump campaign contacted more than 3 million voters by telephone and targeted an additional 1 million voters via live door-knocks.
But this week, the Trump campaign deployed multiple bus tours with prominent supporters of the president to Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin, with Nevada on tap.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign said field offices catering to minorities are opening, most recently bureaus targeting black voters in Cleveland and Tallahassee, Florida, after delays caused by the coronavirus lockdown. The president’s team plans 17 field offices dedicated to black people, 16 focused on Hispanics, and seven on Asian Pacific Islanders. The campaign said it has spent more than $100,000 on personal protective equipment and office cleaning and provided staff with a booklet detailing government health guidelines.
Biden and Harris are sticking close to the former vice president’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, as has been the presumptive nominee’s practice since the coronavirus hit the United States in late winter. The campaign, which in conjunction with the DNC has contacted as many as 3.5 million voters a week via telephone and text messaging, boasts a virtual field staff that it claims will reach 2,000 by month’s end. It hosts events targeting critical battlegrounds and important voting blocs on a daily basis.
On Thursday, the Biden campaign hosted what it billed as a “Texas round-table” to discuss “the reopening of Texas schools and the mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis at the Federal and State levels.” On Friday, the campaign is hosting separate video conference roundtables to discuss issues of concern to rural voters and the need for more broadband access in tribal territories.
