Trailing in polls, Biden and Harris visit NC to talk health care and seek donations
Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel together to North Carolina Tuesday, a rare joint visit indicating that they plan to keep a heavy focus on this key swing state that was one of the closest in the country in the 2020 presidential election.
They’re expected to talk about health care and reproductive rights, two issues seen as key to driving turnout among Democratic voters — and possibly also to convincing some swing voters to back their campaign instead of presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, the former president whom Biden beat in 2020 but who’s now polling ahead of Biden in early stages of their electoral rematch.
Biden and Harris also plan to appear at a private fundraiser in Raleigh Tuesday evening, featuring other prominent Democratic leaders and tickets going for as much as $100,000 per person. The event will follow a planned public appearance at Chavis Community Center in Raleigh, according to WRAL sources.
Biden is expected to discuss his efforts to lower drug prices and improve the Affordable Care Act “so that millions of people across the country have the security and peace of mind that comes with affordable health insurance,” Biden advisor Christen Linke Young told WRAL News.
Young previously served as the No. 2 official in the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, at the beginning of the administration of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, before going into the private sector and then the Biden White House.
The visit comes as the Biden and Trump campaigns shift focus from the now-settled presidential primaries to the general election in November. Although Biden won the election, Trump beat him in North Carolina by about 1.5% of the vote in 2020. Trump, who also won the state in 2016, has also been a frequent local presence this year, visiting North Carolina at least twice in recent months; he also personally backed the former leader of the state GOP, Michael Whatley, to take over the national Republican Party.
Since Jimmy Carter in 1976, only one Democratic presidential candidate has won North Carolina. But Biden was on the ticket then, when Barack Obama won the state in 2008 with Biden as his running mate.
Young said Biden chose North Carolina for this event because of the state’s recent bipartisan success in expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which is also called Obamacare.
“The President has laid out a clear vision where health care is a right and not a privilege,” Young said. “And you have Republicans in Congress talking about taking us backwards and repealing these critical protections.”
Republicans have long made repealing the Affordable Care Act a political priority. But they failed to get it done in 2017, even when Trump was president and the GOP held both chambers of Congress.
It was that failed vote in Washington that convinced legislative Republican leaders in Raleigh to change their stance and begin supporting Medicaid expansion at the state level. Up until then, the fate of Obamacare had seemed too uncertain to commit the state to using it to expand health care coverage, they said. Since that expansion became law last year, hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians — largely in more rural parts of the state — have received government-backed health care.
The federal government paid North Carolina nearly $2 billion in a sort of signing bonus for expanding Medicaid now, a decade after it first became available — a payment Biden pushed for to help convince the final few holdout states to authorize expansion for their residents.
“We've seen tremendous bipartisan success in North Carolina in driving health care forward,” Young said. “And the President is going to keep talking about the importance of this issue to families across the country, including here in North Carolina.”
GOP response
North Carolina Republican Party spokesman Matt Mercer said Republicans welcome Biden’s visit as an opportunity to “highlight the threat the Biden-Harris-Stein agenda poses to our families who want government that acts on their behalf instead of the wishes of the Democratic donor class.”
That’s a reference to Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee for governor this year to replace Cooper, who is term-limited. The Republican gubernatorial nominee is Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson.
Biden is expected to focus on contrasting Democratic and Republican views on Obamacare, a senior administration official told reporters. Robinson has said he favors fully repealing Obamacare, rather than the repeal-and-replace plan some Republicans have proposed.
“It is a concentrated effort to enslave everybody,” Robinson said of the Affordable Care Act during a 2018 appearance on a podcast called Politics and Prophecy.
‘Out of the ordinary’
The Biden-Harris campaign has been increasing its focus on North Carolina. This is the president’s second visit to the Triangle this year after holding an event in Cary in January. It’s the second stop in the Triangle this month for Harris, who campaigned in Durham March 1. First Lady Jill Biden also appeared in Durham last week.
Polling shows Biden faces significant challenges with voters in North Carolina. This month’s WRAL News poll found Trump with a 50%-to-45% lead over Biden among likely voters. The remaining 5% was undecided. Biden also held lower favorability scores than Trump.
Mercer said the increased attention won’t help.
“As North Carolina families realize their paychecks don’t go as far as they did four years ago thanks to Bidenomics, as crime and unchecked illegal immigration threaten our communities, and as today’s Democratic Party embraces radical left-wing ideologies, it's clear our state and nation was safer and more prosperous with President Donald Trump," Mercer said.
It’s unusual for a president and vice president to appear together on the campaign trail. More often, they campaign separately to maximize their reach.
“It really underscores how important we think health care is to American families,” Biden advisor Young said.
Davidson College political science professor Susan Roberts said the rarity of the event highlights the campaign’s efforts to win North Carolina.
“Maybe that's part of their strategy, to say, ‘Let's get the maximum star power. Let's get attention because we're here together,” Roberts said.“Having [Harris] there, I think the two of them have a nice energy together, and I think that's one of the things that the Biden campaign wants to show — energy and enthusiasm.”
A recent WRAL News poll found that voters said they were less concerned about Biden’s and Trump’s ages — 81 and 77, respectively — than they were by each man’s mental capabilities. But while the polling showed more voters skeptical of Biden’s acuity than Trump’s, it also found most voters concerned with Trump’s pending criminal cases.
Meredith College political science chairman David McLennan said the team approach could help Biden with women voters and voters of color, while also reassuring voters concerned about his age that Harris is ready to step into the role if needed.
“If you look at the constituencies he's going to need to win North Carolina, he needs women, he needs people of color, he needs young voters. And it's much more difficult for him individually to get those,” McLennan said. “I think it's a very strategic decision on the part of the Biden-Harris campaign.”
WRAL News polling also shows Biden trailing Trump among likely voters age 18-34, an age bracket that typically leans left.
Harris made history when she became vice president as the first woman, the first Black person and the first person of Asian descent to hold the office; her parents are Jamaican and Indian.
McLennan said the joint visit also sends a message about Biden’s commitment to Harris, whom the president has tapped as his campaign lead on the issue of reproductive rights.
“Because of this constant chatter about ‘Should Biden keep Harris or take her off the ticket,’ I think we'll probably see them not only in North Carolina, but elsewhere together — a very powerful message that ‘We are a team and we will be a team until November,’” McLennan said.
