Biden Woos Union Voters to Help Counter Trump in Minnesota

(Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sharpened his appeal for blue-collar voters in northern Minnesota on Friday, working to hold onto a state Democrats that President Donald Trump has aggressively targeted.

“My entire campaign is built upon a simple concept: It’s time to reward hard work in America, not wealth,” Biden said after touring a carpenters union training facility in Hermantown, a suburb of Duluth. “We don’t have to penalize wealth. But it’s the opposite now, we reward wealth, not work.”

Repeating a phrase he debuted at a CNN town hall on Thursday night, Biden said he views the race against Trump as one between “Scranton and Park Avenue,” assailing Trump for catering to wealthy Americans at the expense of the middle class.

During the tour, the former vice president emphasized his experience overseeing the Recovery Act during the Obama administration and reiterated a promise that he would pursue a policy favoring American products over goods produced overseas.

“Oh, I’ll be damned,” he said, as he watched how apprentices learn how to weld virtually.

After his speech, Biden made a brief stop in Duluth to greet voters who cast their ballot on the first day of early voting in the state. For one of the first times since the pandemic erupted, Biden was able to display the retail politicking that he has craved and often thrives at. The former vice president took a photo with a supporter, greeted young children and chatted at an outdoor coffee shop with the city’s mayor, two college students, who were first time voters, and the store’s owners.

Biden’s visit came just hours before Trump was set to hold a rally across the state in Bemidji.

Trump’s campaign has identified Minnesota as a pick-up opportunity. The president lost the state by less than 2 percentage points in 2016.

Recent polls have shown Biden holds a comfortable lead overall in the state. One from the New York Times and Siena College last week found Biden leads Trump by 9 percentage points in Minnesota.

Non-college educated Whites make up 52% of all voters in Minnesota. And while national polls show Trump with a 27-point advantage among those voters, a Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely Minnesota voters this week found Trump and Biden are effectively tied among Whites without a four-year degree.

In Duluth, Biden said he was confident he would do “very well with White working-class voters.” Trump, he said, is “not polling as well as he did last time.”

Biden said he felt “very good” about Minnesota, as well as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two Rust Belt states Trump won in 2016. “I feel very good about the Midwest generally,” he said.

At his rally later Friday, Trump also appealed to blue-collar workers, saying he had brought back mining jobs that had disappeared during the Obama administration.

“We’re going to win Minnesota because they did nothing for Minnesota except close up that beautiful iron ore territory,” Trump said.

After protests and violence broke out following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a White Minneapolis police officer, Trump tried to tie the unrest to his larger argument about how electing Biden would unleash violence in suburbs as he stokes fears among White voters. But that argument has not stuck.

Ahead of Biden’s visit, surrogates for the president’s campaign slammed Biden’s environmental and economic agenda, arguing it does not align with Minnesota’s values.

“The enthusiasm for this president is incredible because he supports most middle class, blue-collar jobs,” Representative Pete Stauber, a Republican from Minnesota, said on a call with reporters.

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