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President Joe Biden’s campaign held meetings with community members in Nevada this week as it set its sights on bulking up its outreach operation in the critical battleground state.
Senior Biden campaign officials met with stakeholders and, with the Nevada State Democratic Party, held small roundtables with Latino and African American community members, among others the campaign will need if the president is to win the state in 2024.
The effort in Nevada is part of an ongoing and more expansive outreach with other battleground states where similar meetings have been held, according to a Biden campaign official.
Part of the mandate moving forward, Nevada Democratic Party Chair Daniele Monroe-Moreno said, is to remind voters of Biden’s successes, including “lifting them out of the pandemic.” She noted it was no easy task in a purple state like Nevada.
“If there’s a downturn in the world’s economy, if there’s a downturn in the United States, Nevada is always hit the hardest. And we are one of the last states to recover,” she said. “It’s our job as the state party, and me as the state party chair, to make sure that the message is out there to the voters — that they know who’s done the work for them."
The effort to secure battlegrounds like Nevada comes as Biden is faltering in early polling and Democrats have otherwise expressed concern about the president’s preparedness for the 2024 election.
According to a New York Times/Sienna Poll earlier this month, Biden is trailing former president Donald Trump in five of the six battleground states. Biden held the biggest deficit in Nevada, where Trump was beating him by 10 points.
The president’s performance in Nevada is just one sign of potential trouble for Biden. In the latest NBC News poll, Biden weighed in at 40% — his lowest approval rating yet — with his handling of the Israel-Hamas war helping drag down his numbers.
Biden beat Trump by just 2 percentage points in Nevada in 2020.
Nevada hosts a large Latino population and the First in the West Democratic primary. Because of its diverse population, Nevada is often seen as the testing ground for whether a campaign animate these voters nationally. The New York Times survey also found that 17% of registered Democrats polled said they would vote for Trump. Biden won the state in 2020.
But Monroe-Moreno pushed back on the possibility of Trump making any gains on Democrats.
“What I do hear at the grocery store, at the libraries, or at the park with their grandchildren, is that a lot of families feel that Trump’s policies would be devastating for their families,” she said.
Nevada’s Democratic Party has a reputation for being a force, dating back to the days of the late Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.
“The Biden-Harris team has the benefit of leaning in on a strong state party that we have here as we build up our coordinated campaign effort,” Monroe-Moreno said.