MIAMI — Kamala Harris’s first Miami visit as Joe Biden’s running mate was an attempt to engage a large group of voters who haven’t seen the Democratic ticket in the state for nearly a year.
On Thursday, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, managed to meet with non-Cuban Hispanics, Black voters, college graduates and Jewish voters across Miami-Dade County in a six-hour span. They were courting a diverse group voters with vastly different policy preferences and values — who are also crucial for Biden’s hopes in Florida as the polls show a tightening race two months before Election Day.
Harris began her trip with an unannounced stop in Doral, home to Miami’s largest concentration of Venezuelans. Then, she headed to Miami Gardens, Florida’s largest majority Black city, to speak with college students and community leaders. At the same time, Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff was in Aventura courting Jewish voters.
Unlike President Donald Trump, who is betting that his appeal with white voters and Cuban-Americans will put him over the top in Florida, Biden’s winning coalition is far more diverse.
While Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and top campaign surrogates have visited the state in recent weeks, Biden last visited Florida nearly one year ago. Harris hasn’t held a campaign event in the state since first Democratic Primary debate in June 2019, back when she was still running for president. Biden plans to visit Florida next week, though details haven’t been announced.
Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo said it was important for Harris to visit Doral, a longtime stomping ground for Republicans and a city full of non-Cuban Hispanic voters. Taddeo, who is Colombian-American, greeted Harris at Amaize, a Venezuelan fast-casual restaurant in a strip mall a few blocks from President Donald Trump’s golf resort.
“This was really important. A great step,” Taddeo said, about the visit to Amaize. “I love the fact that it was more South American, and not more of the traditional 305 stops,” a reference to Miami’s 305 area code.
Taddeo said the Biden campaign is “getting our message” and that the campaign understands their “the growth opportunity” with non-Cuban Hispanic voters.
One of those voters at the restaurant on Thursday was Melissa Breda, who was born in Italy to Venezuelan parents.
“I really feel a lot of people are shy to say that they’re not for Trump,” Breda said.
After ordering tequeños, a Venezuelan cheese stick, and an arepa, grilled corn cakes stuffed with chicken and cheese, Harris headed 15 miles north to Miami Gardens, where Florida Memorial University’s Roar marching band greeted her with three songs ahead of a forum with Black community leaders in South Florida.
“You are going to push us to be our best selves,” Harris said to the students. “You are the ones who are going to inspire us to fight for the ideals of our country, which have not yet been reached.”
Harris, who would be the first Black woman and Caribbean-American to be vice president if elected, was introduced at Florida Memorial University by Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, an early Harris supporter.
“Black women have carried this nation, this race, this Democratic Party ever since we landed on this continent,” Wilson said. “And for you to be on the cusp of being the first Black, Caribbean vice president, I’m Bahamian, it means so much.”
Wilson joked that she plans to walk around with voter records after the 2020 election to make sure everyone she meets showed up to vote, a nod to her heavily Democratic district that voted for Trump at a slightly higher rate in 2016 than Mitt Romney in 2012. The changes in Wilson’s majority Black congressional district, however small, helped contribute to Trump’s 2016 victory.
Harris began her remarks to the Black community highlighting Trump’s comments on the COVID-19 pandemic. She brought up Trump’s remarks to journalist Bob Woodward at the onset of the pandemic in February when Trump said, “I always wanted to play it down,” while acknowledging that COVID-19 was far more deadly than the flu and could be spread through the air.
“What we are hearing is that on January 28, the president and vice president were informed about the imminence and dangers of COVID-19,” Harris said. “On February 7, the president of the United States, who has the unique and very special responsibility of keeping the American people safe, was in a conversation where he said that COVID was deadly stuff, said that it is airborne. He knew it was airborne, that people would breathe it.”
Harris’s message comes as Florida’s COVID-19 hospitalization data reveals the disproportionate impact of the disease on Black residents.
While Blacks make up 17 percent of Florida’s population, and 16 percent of Florida’s COVID-19 cases, they account for 24 percent of statewide hospitalizations for the disease, according to the Florida Department of Health’s Thursday report.
Blacks with COVID-19 also were hospitalized at a higher rate than Non-Hispanic Whites.
According to the health department’s most recent report, 9.7 percent of all Black residents statewide with a confirmed case were hospitalized for the disease compared to 8.7 percent of all white residents with a confirmed case.
At the county level, disparities in South Florida are even greater, according to the health department’s report.
In Broward, Black residents with COVID-19 were hospitalized at a rate of 11.5 percent compared to individuals classified as “other” (6.2 percent) and white residents (8.2 percent). Black residents of Miami-Dade with a confirmed case of COVID-19 also had the highest rates of hospitalization—10.3 percent—compared to their white counterparts (7.8 percent) and those classified as “other” race (3.2 percent).
The death rate for COVID-19 is also disproportionately higher among Black residents of Miami-Dade, the county with the most confirmed cases of the disease in Florida. In Miami-Dade, African Americans who tested positive for COVID-19 have died at a rate of 3.5 percent compared to a rate of 2.9 percent for white residents and 0.5 percent for people whose race is classified as “other,” according to Thursday’s health department report.
Dr. Jaffus Hardrick, Florida Memorial University’s president, also made the argument that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities between historically black colleges and universities and their majority-white peers.
“One of things that we quickly discovered was that the digital divide was even more pronounced,” Hardrick said to Harris, a Howard University graduate, one of the nation’s preeminent HBCU universities. “We realized that there were so many of our students who didn’t even have computers. I think we all know that the pandemic has really impacted us in ways beyond we could even fathom.”
The pandemic was also top-of-mind at an event with Jewish voters in Aventura with Emhoff.
“Bottom line, this president lied,” Emhoff said at his first solo campaign event with local rabbis and Jewish Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Miami-Dade Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who is running for Miami-Dade mayor. “He knew what was going on with COVID. And as a result, more than 190,000 of our fellow Americans are now dead.”
Emhoff called Florida his “home-away-from-home” noting that he spent time in Miami Beach with his grandmother who retired there. He also referenced his Jewish identity, bar mitzvah and how he attended a Jewish summer camp.
“This entire campaign is rooted in those same Jewish values that we talked about earlier,” Emhoff said. “A commitment above all to justice for all.”
As Harris and Emhoff campaigned around Miami-Dade County, Republicans held their own event in Hialeah to shore up their base of Cuban-American support. Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez and state Sen. Manny Diaz talked with a group of retired police officers, who were all Cuban. The group insisted that Trump was “the only option on the ticket.”
“The radical left seeks to strip law enforcement of the necessary tools and the resources to uphold the rule of law, and even advocate for defunding the police, which I find extremely concerning,” said Nunez after calling Harris “the radical senator from California.”
But at the same time some Republicans were bashing Harris, another well-known anti-Trump Republican was on hand to greet her in Doral.
CNN commentator Ana Navarro, a Republican originally from Nicaragua and a Biden supporter who has hosted Latino roundtables for the campaign in Florida and Wisconsin, held out her hands in a socially-distanced version of a hug when Harris arrived at Amaize.
Harris dropped in a few Spanish words during her restaurant visit. She introduced Emhoff, as “mi esposo,” Spanish for “my husband.”
And when she was welcomed, she responded, “Gracias. Good to be here.”
Miami Herald staff writer Daniel Chang and El Nuevo Herald staff writer Ana Claudia Chacin contributed to this report.
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