Impact2020: October 5, 2020
In today’s Impact2020 briefing, we take a look at where things stand after a wild 72 hours for the presidential and North Carolina Senate races and where Joe Biden is making up ground in Florida.
On the Ground
Biden’s decision: Go high or go low?
After President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis, Joe Biden’s campaign announced it would stop running negative ads. But McClatchy’s Alex Roarty and Dave Catanese report that some Democrats are pushing their party’s nominee to go back on the attack on the airwaves.
Roarty and Catanese write: “With Election Day less than a month away and early voting already in progress in key battleground states, these Democratic operatives said Biden must push forward with the messaging that has helped provide him with a stable lead in the presidential race, especially as the Trump campaign has continued to air attack ads.”
Amanda Renteria, the former political director for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016, said: “At this point, Biden must share truth and facts even if they paint Trump negatively. There is simply too much the public needs to know in the most important election in our lifetime. It is critical that Biden also vigorously proceeds.”
Meanwhile, super PACs such as Priorities USA and American Bridge have not changed their ad strategy in the wake of Trump’s positive test. The president tweeted that he would be leaving Walter Reed medical center later today.
Reed Galen, a co-founder of the anti-Trump group Lincoln Project, said, with the president unable to campaign and facing a severe financial deficit, Democrats have a chance to engineer a huge victory in November. “Now is the time to finish them off,” he said.
Trailing in the polls entering the final weeks of the race, the Trump campaign is “hobbled by a limited bench of surrogates, with senior officials out of commission and the top of the ticket hospitalized,” McClatchy’s Michael Wilner and Francesca Chambers write.
On a call with staffers around the country over the weekend, the campaign “sought to provide direction and project confidence to staff around the country,” they report. “Vice President Mike Pence told aides that there would be a ‘full deployment’ of key allies and supporters and members of the first family at in-person and virtual events.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, who also tested positive for coronavirus, said: “We need to keep pressing pedal to the metal.”
Back in Florida
Biden is traveling to Miami today, which is the final day Floridians can register to vote. The Miami Herald’s David Smiley reports that the former vice president is scheduled to Little Haiti and Little Havana before participating in an NBC town hall this evening. The trip marks Biden’s first to Miami since September of last year.
Credit: Andrew Harnik, AP
The pandemic will likely be on Biden’s agenda, as more than 14,670 Florida residents have died of COVID-19. “The pandemic has hit Miami’s Haitian-American community — the largest in the U.S. — especially hard,” Smiley writes.
Ahead of the visit, a new poll by Bendixen & Amandi International and the Miami Herald shows Biden leading Trump 57% to 37% in Miami-Dade County. Smiley reports that “Cuban-American voters continue to favor” Trump over Biden in the county, “but more are moving toward the Democratic nominee, boosting Biden’s chances of winning battleground Florida.”
The survey was conducted after last week’s debate but before Trump announced he had contracted COVID-19.
What’s next in NC’s Senate race?
The presidential contest isn’t the only major election that has been upended over the last several days.
Here’s the Raleigh News & Observer’s Brian Murphy on the state of the North Carolina Senate race, which could determine control of the upper chamber: “in a remarkable three-hour period, incumbent Thom Tillis announced he’d tested positive for the coronavirus, and the challenger leading in the polls, Cal Cunningham, confirmed the authenticity of romantic text messages with a woman that is not his wife.”
Cunningham has led in polls throughout the summer and raised a record-setting $28.3 million in the past three months, but now “faces many more questions about his relationship with a California public relations strategist.” He is not dropping out of the race and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is continuing to run TV ads in support of Cunningham.
Meanwhile, Tillis has all but paused his campaign after contracting COVID-19. His 10-day timeline for self-isolation would allow him to return to Washington in time for Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee. His campaign has declined to comment on the Cunningham text messages, saying only that “we were surprised to read the news.”
So far, more than 340,000 North Carolina voters have cast an absentee ballot.
Trail Mix
COVID fallout
McClatchy’s Michael Wilner reports how Trump’s diagnosis leaves Pence to carry the full load of campaigning, and creates the possibility that he “could at some point have to step into the role of presidential duties if Trump is incapacitated.”
McClatchy’s David J. Neal has a list of all the people in the president’s inner circle who have tested positive for coronavirus.
Battleground state watch
David Smiley, Nora Gamez Torres and Kevin G. Hall report for the Miami Herald on how the Proud Boys are trying to assimilate into the Florida Republican Party.
A Florida grassroots organization is donating $7 million to help pay court fines and fees for former Miami-Dade felons looking to restore their voting rights, David Ovalle writes for the Miami Herald.
Pennsylvania’s online system for registering to vote and tracking mail ballots crashed over the weekend, Joe Roebuck reports for the Allentown Morning Call.
GOP Sen. Pat Toomey said he won’t run for re-election or Pennsylvania governor in 2022, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Tamari and Allison Steele report.
Battle for Congress
The State’s Maayan Schechter and Joseph Bustos have all the details from the first South Carolina Senate debate between Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democrat Jaime Harrison.
The Miami Herald’s Alex Daugherty has three deep dives on the congressional races in the Miami area.
Number of the Day
14
Biden leads Trump by 14 points, 53% to 39%, among registered voters nationally, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which was conducted after the debate but before Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis was made public.
“This is insanity”
An attending physician at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was not amused by Trump’s brief motorcade trip outside the hospital on Sunday calling it “completely unnecessary.”
For Planning Purposes
Oct. 5
Joe Biden campaigns in Florida before participating in an NBC News town hall
Vice President Mike Pence travels to Salt Lake City, Utah
Oct. 8
Biden, Pence and Kamala Harris travel to Arizona
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This story was originally published October 5, 2020 at 12:20 PM.