BRISTOL, Pennsylvania. Inside its Delaware headquarters, President Joe Biden’s campaign signals it will incorporate Donald Trump’s recent felony conviction as a central element of the Democratic incumbent’s re-election message.
But in neighboring battleground Pennsylvania, a state that could decide control of Congress and the presidency this fall, Democrats are far from certain that Trump’s criminal record will matter to voters.
“ This will have an effect, but a pretty small effect,” former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell said of Trump’s recent 34 criminal convictions in the New York money hush case. “I don’t think we can count on that. We have to go out and win elections by talking about things that are important.”
Less than a week after Trump became the first US president convicted of a crime, Biden’s Democratic Party has only begun to navigate the delicate politics of the presumptive Republican nominee’s unprecedented legal status.
There are prominent voices at Biden campaign headquarters who believe Democrats should trust Trump’s conviction as a significant turning point in politics and history. Others advocate a more cautious approach, fearing a backlash from voters if Democratic officials push too hard for a criminal conviction that Trump insists, without evidence, was “rigged” against him.
The Democrats’ decision could prove fundamental in the evolution of the Biden-Trump rematch – and in the battle for control of the House and Senate.
Bottom line: On Wednesday, a senior adviser to the Biden campaign, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said Trump’s felony conviction would become a regular part of the campaign’s message. But it will be part of a broader context in which the campaign will argue that Trump does not respect the US electoral process or the judicial system.
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and deflected a light-hearted question about whether the people she watched the verdict with were “pretending not to be happy” when the conviction was announced.
She kept a straight face even as Kimmel and the audience laughed. Instead, Harris discussed the case and the jury’s deliberations before adding, “I think the reality is that cheaters don’t like to be caught and held accountable.”
Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who advises Biden’s campaign, dismissed those who warned of political risks if the president and lower-ranking Democrats overreact.
“The guy was convicted of 34 charges. How do you overdo it? Anzalone said of Trump. “That conviction makes voters really sick.”
Anzalone continued: “Democrats know they still need to talk about the future and what they have done to help American families and the economy. But at the end of the day, this (conviction) is a big problem.”
It makes no sense for Biden to abandon other campaign priorities as he grapples with Trump’s legal troubles.
In fact, the Democratic president announced plans Tuesday to enact immediate and significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, as the White House seeks to neutralize immigration as a political liability. He is also focusing on the Republican Party’s push to further undermine abortion rights, while promoting his actions to curb inflation, reduce prescription drug costs and improve the nation’s infrastructure.
And in her interview with Kimmel, Harris stopped talking about the case and started mentioning Biden’s efforts to lower drug prices and limit the cost of insulin for some Americans.
Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller dismissed questions about Biden’s evolving strategy and instead pointed to the criminal trial Biden’s son Hunter faces three criminal charges stemming from the purchase of a gun in October 2018 and was followed separately by allegations that he traded on his family’s name to do business abroad.
“Corrupt Joe Biden will do anything to divert attention from Hunter’s trial and the fact that his family has raised tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine,” Miller said. “The Biden Family Criminal Empire will come to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell access to government for personal profit.”
The rest of the Democratic Party may ultimately follow Biden’s lead in condemning Trump, but while the Biden campaign was quietly revealing its intentions to focus at least a little on that, Democratic leaders continued to offer a cautious perspective.
In an interview, Rep. Suzan DelBene, who chairs the House Democrats’ campaign arm, declined to say whether she would use the term “convicted felon” to describe Trump in her committee’s massive paid advertising campaign in the coming months. She also did not say whether Democrats would be more likely to win the House majority as a result of Trump’s conviction.
But DelBene said she would ensure that vulnerable House Republicans in elections across America would have to answer for their “blind loyalty” to Trump, especially after the recent conviction. Republicans across Capitol Hill overwhelmingly condemned the jury’s unanimous verdict last week that Trump broke the law by concealing secret payments to an adult film actress in a way that was designed to benefit his first presidential campaign.
“Let’s hold Republicans accountable for this,” DelBene said. “They don’t respect the rule of law.”
The issue is already proving to be a key dividing line in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District in suburban Bucks County, which is one of the most important swing regions in U.S. politics. As the Bucks advance this fall, so could their control of Congress and the White House.
Democratic House candidate Ashley Ehasz, a 35-year-old former Army helicopter pilot, seized on Trump’s condemnation in an interview and called for the silence of her opponent, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who has represented the suburban Philadelphia district since 2019.
While many Republicans in Congress rushed to defend Trump after his guilty verdict, Fitzpatrick avoided the issue altogether. His office ignored multiple requests for comment this week.
“Now we have a convicted felon, who is the leader of the Republican Party, and Brian Fitzpatrick doesn’t have the courage to say, ‘He doesn’t deserve my support,’” Ehasz told the Associated Press. “There are no more moderate GOP members in the House.”
While Fitzpatrick remained silent, Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who represents a Republican-leaning district in the northwest part of the state, said his constituents are disappointed with the verdict. He’s worried they’re so frustrated with politics that they won’t vote this fall.
“What worries me is that people will start saying I’m not going to participate anymore,” Kelly said in an interview. “I say: this is the worst thing you can do. Do not stop.”
An ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the verdict found that perceptions of Trump and Biden had not changed significantly from before the verdict was announced.
The poll also found that about half of Americans think Trump should end his presidential campaign because of the conviction. This conclusion is also essentially unchanged from before the verdict and is heavily driven by partisanship, with three-quarters of Republicans in the most recent polls saying Trump should not end his campaign.
In Pennsylvania, former U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, who lost his 2022 Senate bid in the Democratic primary to now-Sen. John Fetterman suggested that voters simply care about other issues.
“If there’s a danger, it’s taking your eye off the ball, right? I mean, the conviction is a big, shiny thing that the media paid a lot of attention to,” he said. “That’s not what voters care about, and it just tells them indirectly that you may not share their priorities.”
That said, Lamb added, “I have great confidence in the judgment of the president and his team.”
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Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Amelia Thomson DeVeaux and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.
