WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden races into yet another battleground state on Wednesday, continuing to contrast with Donald Trump on economic policy, while his own re-election campaign prepares a new $14 million ad campaign aimed in part at black voters. Latinos and Asian Americans.
Biden is traveling to Racine, Wisconsin, where he will highlight Microsoft’s decision to build a $3.3 billion data center that is expected to create about 2,000 jobs. It’s also the place where Trump, with much fanfare, touted Taiwan-based electronics giant Foxconn’s plan to build a $10 billion factory that was expected to employ 10,000 people. Except it was never finished.
Aware of this history, Microsoft President Brad Smith said in an interview with the Associated Press that Microsoft had a “steadfast commitment to underpromising and overdelivering” and praised the Biden administration and Democratic governor Tony Evers for economic policies that set the stage for the developments announced Wednesday.
Trump’s campaign has not addressed Foxconn, but the former Republican president has often said the economy was in a much better position when he was in office and will be again if he wins in 2024.
Meanwhile, Biden’s re-election team is honing its reach to minority voters on the airwaves, with the new seven-figure television and digital ad campaign launching Wednesday that follows the $30 million effort that began after his State of the Union address in early March. One of the ads that is part of the new campaign will also be released on Wednesday and focuses on Trump’s failed but determined effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
After his speech, Biden makes a campaign stop to speak to black voters about what’s at stake in the November elections.
Biden’s campaign wants to capitalize on the fundraising advantage it has over Trump, building up significant resources on the ground in key states to force Republicans to play catch-up much later this year.
“As important as our own historic investments is the complete lack of investment from the other side,” Michael Tyler, communications director for the Biden campaign, told reporters. “Trump’s paid media strategy can only be described as anemic and inefficient.”
A significant portion of the $14 million campaign that begins Wednesday will go to Black and Hispanic media, as well as Asian American print and radio media, according to the campaign. Campaign officials also said Biden will continue to do targeted interviews with media outlets that primarily serve minority audiences, while the campaign plans in May to launch more coalition groups that focus on specific blocs of voters. So far, the Biden campaign has started groups to engage women, Latinos and educators.
By the end of May, Biden’s reelection effort will have more than 200 positions and about 500 staffers, according to Dan Kanninen, the campaign’s battleground director. These numbers include offices in areas that have not traditionally seen investment from Democrats in pockets of Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina.
“We’re showing up in the community every day and trying to win every vote,” said Quentin Fulks, chief deputy campaign manager for the Biden campaign. “Donald Trump and his team are doing nothing like that.”
Although Biden’s comments in Racine were part of a formal White House event, Fulks said the stop will “highlight the stark contrast between the progress he has made for Wisconsin families and the failures of Donald Trump.”
Microsoft’s Smith said the first phase of the new data center complex will bring an influx of 2,300 jobs, mostly in construction, by the end of the year.
While Microsoft has ramped up construction of AI-powered data centers around the world, “this one is more important than many because there is more land and, ultimately, access to energy available,” said Smith, who as a child lived in the area where the center is being built.
Once in operation, however, even the most powerful data centers typically employ a relatively small group of full-time employees to oversee them. Microsoft will have about 500, drawn from highly skilled workers in the corridor between Milwaukee and Chicago, Smith said.
However, he argued that the biggest impact for the region would be in the technology itself and in broader investments in preparing the Upper Midwest for its impacts.
“It’s about the competitiveness of the industry in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio,” Smith said.
Racine County is a hot spot. All but five of the last 33 winning presidential candidates have endorsed it. Trump is one of the five. He won Racine County but lost the election. Biden was the first Democrat since 1976 to win Wisconsin without winning Racine County.
The race is expected to be tight in Wisconsin, where four of the last six presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point. Biden won by just under 21,000 votes in 2020. A recent Marquette University poll showed that Republican voters in Wisconsin are slightly more enthusiastic about the election than Democrats.
___
Associated Press writers Scott Bauer in Wisconsin and Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
