Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden courted Cuban, Haitian and Venezuelan voters in Florida’s largest county on Monday, offering promises for the economy, the pandemic and the countries they immigrated from as many were receiving their vote-by-mail ballots.
If he wins Florida, Biden suggested during a stop in Little Haiti, he’d win the presidency.
And, he said, in a close race in Florida, every vote in every community matters. “Folks, the Haitian community by itself — if the turnout is like it was the last time — the Haitian community itself could determine the outcome of this election,” Biden said. “Wouldn’t it be an irony, the irony of all ironies, if on election eve it turned out Haitians delivered the coup de gras in this election.”
Speaking later in Little Havana, Biden said “Hispanic voters, especially here in Florida, can help put our nation on a new path forward.”
Biden said much more needs to be done to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic — starting with supporting the widespread wearing of masks. “The nation’s COVID crisis is far, far from over,” he said.
“My prayers continue to be with the president and the first lady for their health and safety as they’re like so many American families, they’re dealing with COVID-19. I was glad to see the president speaking, recording videos over the weekend. Now that he’s busy tweeting campaign messages, I would ask him to do this: Listen to the scientists. Support masks. Support mask mandates nationwide,” Biden said. “We know it saves lives.”
Biden said his prayers extend beyond President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump — to “the families of the 210,000 Americans who died from the virus.” Since Trump entered the hospital on Friday, he said more than 100,000 more people have been diagnosed with COVID-19 — and 5,000 people would die this week.
And he lamented the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on Hispanic communities. In Florida, he said, Hispanics make up about 25% of the population —and 37% of the COVID deaths.
The Democratic nominee also pledged action on another critical issue to South Florida: climate change. “We’re going to meet the threat of climate change and invest in strengthening climate resilience,” he said. “We are already dealing with the existential threat of climate change. I don’t have to tell you in Miami,” citing stronger, more frequent hurricanes, riding tides and flooding.
“Look, that’s not some distant future in Miami or South Florida. You’re dealing with it right now. What do you have to do, get knocked in the head to understand it?” Biden said. Trump once dismissed climate change as a hoax.
Biden’s day in South Florida came four weeks before Election Day. Besides the stops in Little Haiti, the Democratic nominee was scheduled to answer questions from undecided Florida voters in an NBC News town hall, originating from the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. To maximize coronavirus precautions, the town hall is being held outside the museum on Monday night.
At the Little Haiti Cultural Center, where the event was outside, Biden wore a black mask. At the Jose Marti Gym in Little Havana, where the event was indoors, he wore a blue surgical mask. At both locations, spectators were socially distanced, someone rushed up to wipe the lecterns between speakers, and Biden remained masked while speaking.
“This city is living proof of the incredible strength we draw from families and communities from every culture choosing America,” Biden said at the Little Havana stop. Besides coronavirus, Biden talked about his “Build Back Better” economic plan during remarks that included his assessment of the impact his proposals would have on Hispanic communities.
In Little Havana, where Biden spoke for 27 minutes, he portrayed himself as much better than Trump to pressure Cuba, Venezuela and other regimes to change.
“We should be leading the international effort to confront the massive humanitarian crisis in Venezuela,” Biden said. “[Nicolás] Maduro, who I’ve met, is a dictator plain and simple, and he’s causing incredible pain and suffering among the Venezuelan people to maintain his grip on power. The Venezuelan people need our support.”
He promised to immediately grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans, allowing people who have fled the country to live and work in the U.S.
Although Trump has touted his reversal of former President Barack Obama’s policies of engagement toward Cuba, Biden said the situation hasn’t improved. “The administration’s approach is not working. Cuba is no closer to freedom and democracy than it was four years ago,” he said, with more political prisoners, continued brutality by the secret police, and an increased Russian presence.
He said the Trump administration’s policy of deporting people to Cuba is “unconscionable” and said Trump’s anti-immigration policies are keeping almost 10,000 Cubans in tent camps on the Mexican side of the U.S. border.
Biden said his Build Back Better economic plan would “make sure Hispanic communities benefit from hundreds of billions of dollars in investments.”
In Little Haiti, where he spoke for about 10 minutes, Biden promised to remember the community and its needs if he’s elected. “Little Haiti grows and prospers, the whole of Miami-Dade prospers. Nobody loses. Everybody wins,” he said.
Before Biden began his Florida trip on Monday, his campaign released his “commitment to Haitian Americans” and offered a contrast with Trump, arguing the president “has pursued policies that undermine U.S. interests and hurt and disrespect millions of Haitian Americans in the United States.”
Haitian Americans are largely Democratic. But leading Florida Republicans have spent years courting the Haitian community, and in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to be Haitian Americans’ “biggest champion.” Trump received an estimated 20% of the vote from Florida Haitian Americans in 2016, far higher than from other Black voters.
The Trump Administration hasn’t wanted to renew temporary protected status, or TPS, a humanitarian program that has allowed Haitians to legally live and work in the U.S. after a series of calamities befell their country. The Biden campaign said if he’s elected, the Trump administration’s TPS decisions would be reviewed. It was Biden, then the vice president, who visited Miami’s Little Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to announce TPS for eligible Haitian nationals.
“The most important thing that we wanted to make clear is we wanted to make sure temporary protected status was guaranteed to all Haitians. And this is not the time to lift it. This is not the time to end it. Look, we have the same cultural backgrounds the same people of faith. We believe in the same things. We honor family. Family first,” Biden said during the Little Haiti stop.
And in 2018, it was widely reported the president used a vulgarity to describe people from Haiti and African nations, though Trump and the White House later denied he applied the term to Haiti. The official Biden campaign statement on his Haitian policies referred to the incident. It said Trump “Denigrated the country and people of Haiti by referring to it as a ‘s-hole country.'”
Biden promised to review or reverse multiple Trump administration policies related to Haiti and Haitian Americans, besides TPS. Deportations for undocumented immigrants who have been living and working in the United States would be halted and legislation would be developed for “a path to citizenship for the thousands of Haitians who have long called the United States home.”
The Biden campaign also criticized Trump for ending a family reunification program that allowed Haitians to join their families in the United States while awaiting their immigrant visas, something he pledged to reverse. He also faulted Trump for continuing deportations of Haitians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Responding for the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee’s senior communications adviser for Black media said in a statement that “President Trump is delivering tangible results that are meaningful for residents in Little Haiti and all over America.”
Florida awards 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. As it is in almost every election — Donald Trump won the state by 1.2 percentage points in 2016 — it’s ultra close. The FiveThirtyEight average of public opinion polls on Florida on Monday showed Biden with support of 48% of the voters, 3 points ahead of Trump’s 45%.
Jill Biden accompanied her husband to the little Haiti and Little Havana stops before breaking away for a Univisión TV appearance and a Women for Biden event west of Boca Raton.
A couple hundred cars were at the Women for Biden event at the Century Village Clubhouse. Most watched from their cars, while a few stood holding signs supporting her husband.
Biden encouraged attendees to come together and fight against the country’s division. “In this pandemic, we’re coming together and we’re holding onto each other. We’re finding mercy in the moments we might once have taken for granted. We’re seeing that our differences are precious and that our similarities are infinite,” she said. “Democrat and Republican. Rural and urban. North and south. Coast to coast. Our communities are showing that the heart of this nation still beats with kindness and courage.”
“Together our voices are more powerful than they ever could be,” Jill Biden said to the crowd. “We have to show them our power, especially as women.”
A chorus of car horns erupted from the crowd.
Outside Century Village, a group of Trump supporters held signs on both sides of Lyons Road.
Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez, speaking Monday in a telephone news conference organized by the Trump campaign, ridiculed Biden’s outreach to the Haitian and Hispanic communities.
She said Biden is running a “culturally incompetent campaign” that is struggling to make inroads with the “diverse communities here in Florida.”
Nuñez said Trump stands against the socialist policies that have ruined Venezuela and Cuba. “We do not want socialism being pervasive in our country,” she said.
Nuñez, who had a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in August, hasn’t always thought highly of Trump. When she was supporting U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Nuñez wrote on Twitter that “Trump is the biggest con-man there is.” She added the hashtags “#supportsKKK” and “#nevertrump.”
Also on the call, state Sen. Joe Gruters, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, called Biden “Trojan horse for the agenda of the radical left” and “the only real threat to America’s recovering economy.”
Victoria Principe is voting in her first presidential election this year, after becoming a citizen at the end of 2019. She and her family fled Venezuela when she was 11, and settled in Weston.
“I will be casting my first vote in a presidential general election for Joe Biden,” she said at Biden’s Little Havana event. “Joe shares the values that are important to our families: empathy, humility, faith and compassion. That’s why I’m so proud to be with you here today.”
Staff writers Brooke Baitinger and Skyler Swisher contributed to this report.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
