With NC in play, Biden and Harris plan joint campaign visit to state this month
.JPG "President Joe Biden talks about his economic policies at the Old Post Office in Chicago on June 28, 2023.")
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris plan to visit North Carolina together on March 26, according to their campaign.
During what the campaign calls its March Month of Action, Biden and Harris plan to visit every battleground state.
A specific city or location in North Carolina hasn’t been announced yet.
This visit marks the first time Biden and Harris have traveled together to North Carolina. And Gov. Roy Cooper plans to attend.
Electing a Democrat
Early in the 2024 election cycle, Biden’s campaign zeroed in on North Carolina as a state to win. The president and many of his surrogates have followed with visits to the state.
North Carolina has elected only one Democratic president since 1976: former President Barack Obama. In 2008, Obama won North Carolina by fewer than 14,000 votes against Sen. John McCain.
But Biden only lost the state to former President Donald Trump in 2020 by 1.3%. And the two are their party’s nominees again in the 2024 election.
Immediately after announcing North Carolina was part of the campaign’s strategy to win, it launched a 16-week, $25 million ad campaign in battleground states that included North Carolina.
This week, the campaign released a new ad as part of a $30 million purchase across the battleground states.
This ad, airing in North Carolina, attacks Trump for threatening to cut Social Security and Medicare. In the ad, viewers hear a soundbite from an interview in which Trump discusses cutting these programs and then another from Biden, who vows to stop anyone who tries.
Trump’s campaign said the former president was talking in that interview about cutting waste, and that he protected both Social Security and Medicare during his first term, according to CNN.
What you will hear
The Biden campaign said 1 million North Carolinians will receive health care through the Affordable Care Act. The Medicaid expansion bill signed into law by Cooper last year allows 600,000 North Carolinians to have new access to health care.
The campaign is also touting a 3.5% unemployment rate in North Carolina, with nearly 445,000 jobs created.
But don’t expect messaging to stay completely positive. The campaign was quick to attack North Carolina Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson. Among the campaign’s complaints about Robinson is what it says are his attacks on public schools, his threats to ban abortion with no exception — his campaign has since said that he supports exceptions for rape, incest and danger to the mother’s life — and his penchant to spread 2020 election conspiracies.
