WASHINGTON D.C., DC — President Joe Biden visited a farm in Northfield, Minnesota, Wednesday, as part of two weeks of stops in rural America by top administration officials. The visits are intended to highlight how increases in government spending can help improve people's lives.
Biden's focus on the state comes just five days after Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota announced he was running for president, becoming the party's first elected official to challenge Biden in the 2024 primary.
Biden and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack used the farm as a backdrop to highlight how federal investment in rural areas helps farmers through legislation the White House helped champion, including the public works law that Congress passed in 2021 and last year’s health care and green energy package.
"Facing higher costs and earning less, family farms have struggled to make it work, to make the math work, and the promise of keeping the farm in the family is slipping out of reach for so many across America," said Biden from Northfield's Dutch Field Farms. "And when family farms go by the wayside, the small businesses, hospitals, schools that support them, they suffer as well in the community."
The White House said it wants to highlight improvements to critical infrastructure, including high-speed internet, safer roads and bridges, clean drinking water and reliable energy. The goal is to show that Americans in rural communities do not have to move away in search of economic opportunity, according to the White House.
"Farmers and ranchers and rural business owners, including scores of young people, have to leave home in search of good-paying jobs and a chance at the American dream," Biden said. "All over rural America, young people are saying to their parents, 'I can't live here anymore. I can't do it because I can't find a job.' …I came to office determined to change that."
Phillips' presidential aspirations aside, the tour may ultimately serve to boost Biden's reelection campaign, making voters more aware of potentially popular programs in rural areas that have shifted heavily toward Republicans in recent elections.
"It's about investing in all, all of America," he said.
The trips that begin Monday will emphasize a number of administration initiatives in rural areas, including $1 billion to expand independent meat and poultry processing capacity, which is meant to give farmers more market options and reduce prices.
Officials will promote Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, an Agriculture Department program aiming to spend about $3 billion on 140-plus projects nationwide that help farmers seek new market opportunities as part of efforts to combat climate change.
In Indiana, Vilsack plans to address Future Farmers of America about opportunities for young leaders in the agricultural sector. In stops in Wyoming and Colorado, he will highlight land conservation efforts.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will go to New Mexico to discuss water infrastructure and to Colorado to showcase projects to remediate abandoned mines in rural communities. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will be in Arizona to talk about the power grid and clean energy investment in the rural Southwest.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough plans to visit Iowa to discuss improving access to medical care for veterans in rural areas. The head of the Small Business Administration, Isabel Guzman, will travel to Georgia to talk about loans for rural small businesses. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona will be in New Hampshire promoting how community colleges help students from rural areas. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will be in North Carolina talking about healthcare access in rural areas.
Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su will be in Pennsylvania to discuss boosting employment opportunities in rural areas. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai will head to Indiana to discuss how international trade can benefit rural farmers and producers.
The White House and Biden's reelection campaign said the president's trip to Minnesota was planned before Phillips announced his candidacy. The congressman is the only elected official from the president’s party to campaign against him for the White House.
Phillips, 54, is a moderate from the largely well-to-do, comfortably Democratic Minneapolis suburbs. He has been saying since last year that Biden shouldn't be seeking reelection and should instead step aside to make way for a new generation. He points to polls showing voters, even many Democrats, concerned about the 80-year-old president's age and electability against Donald Trump, the former president and Republican front-runner.
Biden's trip, coming so soon after Phillips’ announcement, will be an opportunity for the president to try to snuff out any potential support for his nascent primary challenger. Invited guests to Biden's fundraiser include past donors to Phillips' congressional campaigns, as well as Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz.
Phillips' campaign will feel “almost like a cold glass of water being thrown in his face," said Ken Martin, chair of Minnesota Democrats and a Democratic National Committee vice chair.
Martin is a friend of Phillips and recruited him to run for his House seat. But if Phillips believes that people are clamoring for alternatives to Biden, Martin said, “he may be alone in that thinking amongst Democratic Party leaders."
“There really does not seem to be as much of an opening here, as much as he might want, or think there is, or should be," he said.
Walz has been even more full-throated in his defense of Biden, releasing a fundraising email Friday on Biden's behalf before Phillips even formally got into the race titled “Minnesotans Love Joe Biden."
“I have to say this about Minnesota: It’s a great state, full of great people. And sometimes they do crazy things,” Walz wrote, such as making "political side shows for themselves.”
An AP-NORC poll released in August found that the top words associated with Biden were “old” and “confused.” Nearly 70% of Democrats and 77% of U.S. adults said they thought Biden was too old to be effective for four more years.
Another Minnesota Democrat, Rep. Angie Craig, joined Phillips in suggesting Biden shouldn't seek reelection prior to last year's midterms, but now says she supports the president. Dutch Creek Farms, which Biden visited Wednesday, is in Craig's district.
Prominent Black Democrats, meanwhile, have slammed Phillips for focusing his early campaign on New Hampshire, which is overwhelmingly white, in defiance of the new, Biden-championed 2024 Democratic primary calendar that has South Carolina going first. The move is meant to better empower Black and minority voters — but Biden also did far better as a 2020 Democratic primary candidate in South Carolina, which he won handily, than New Hampshire, where he finished fifth.
“Any serious Democratic candidate would understand that Black voters are the backbone of the Democratic Party,” said Mississippi Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson. He said Phillips' White House run is “disrespectful to the voters of color.”
New Hampshire's primary, which officials are planning to hold in January ahead of South Carolina's on Feb. 3, is unsanctioned by the Democratic National Committee. Biden won't appear on its ballot but every New Hampshire state senator and other party leaders are leading a write-in campaign on the president's behalf.
“I welcome President Biden back to Minnesota, where Everyone’s Invited!,” Phillips said in a statement about Biden's trip, referencing his campaign slogan. “I’m grateful that the president chose to make a last-minute trip to our great state to discuss the urgent issues affecting everyday Americans.”
He added that he “won’t be able to welcome the president, as I’ll be hosting my first town hall in New Hampshire — which is celebrating its 103rd anniversary of hosting America’s first in the nation presidential primary.”
In response to Phillips' claim that Biden chose to visit the state "last-minute," White House Deputy Press Secretary Emilie Simons said the trip "has been in the works for months." When asked if the president would speak at all about Phillips' 2024 campaign, Simons instead referenced the congressman's past voting record and the support he's shown Biden and his administration throughout his presidency.
"The congressman has voted with the President 100 percent of the time, and we are grateful for his support," she said.
Biden's campaign put out a statement as Phillips announced his bid last week, saying it was “hard at work mobilizing the winning coalition that President Biden can uniquely bring together." That's after ignoring previous primary challenges from self-help author Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist who eventually switched from running as a Democrat to an independent.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre wouldn't comment on Biden hitting Phillips' home state beyond telling reporters that "this president loves Minnesota.”
Minnesota hasn’t backed a Republican for president since Richard Nixon in 1972. Trump narrowly lost the state to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and talked before the 2020 election of flipping the state before ultimately failing to do so. Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher said Biden will need to shore up Minnesota support for 2024, likening it to a swing state the president has visited more than any other, Pennsylvania.
“It is not a diehard, reliable blue state,” Belcher said. He noted Minnesota is part of the midwestern blue wall that includes Michigan and Wisconsin, and Biden "does not stand a chance if that blue wall does not stand."
“We’ve seen that blue wall, in past elections, be shaky,” Belcher said.
Pennsylvania Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, who worked with Phillips as a member of the centrist House Problem Solvers Caucus and other legislative endeavors, said she has “an enormous amount of respect for Dean” but “I feel as though his likely platform would be very similar to the platform that he has voted for largely, which is President Biden’s agenda and legislative accomplishments."
"I don’t see a real differentiation,” Houlahan said. She also called Phillips a ”distraction" at a time when Democrats should be backing Biden "in a unified manner to allow him, and us, to complete work that we’ve all started together.”
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