Biden’s top fundraisers are hosting him in Miami, saying Florida is ‘still in play’

Winning Florida in November will likely be an uphill battle for President Joe Biden, but the Sunshine State is still poised to be a cash cow for his campaign.

Even as Florida has drifted to the right in recent years, it remains one of the most donor-rich states in the country for both Democrats and Republicans, making it an important stop for Biden as he looks to round up the funds he’ll need to wage a long — and almost certainly expensive — fight for a second term in the White House.

Biden is set to swing through two fundraisers hosted by deep-pocketed South Florida donors on Tuesday, according to his campaign, one in Palm Beach and the other in Miami. The campaign did not disclose additional details about the events, but two people familiar with the Miami fundraiser said that tickets start at $3,300 per person and go up to $250,000 for co-chair tickets.

Among the hosts of the Miami fundraiser is Coral Gables attorney Chris Korge, a longtime Democratic donor and the national finance chair of the Biden Victory Fund, the joint fundraising apparatus shared by the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties. Korge is also finance chair for the DNC.

Nikki Fried, the chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, said that the Tuesday fundraisers are an opportunity for Biden to “relight that spark” among the state’s major donors. Unlike 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic upended nearly every aspect of a normal presidential campaign, Biden now has the chance to put himself face-to-face with some of his biggest givers.

“For any type of election, your candidates, your incumbents have to resell the image and resell the dream,” Fried, who’s attending the fundraiser in Miami, said. “And that’s what he has to do.”

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Florida donors have already poured millions into Biden’s political operation over the past year, with some of the largest sums coming from Tampa Bay Buccaneers co-owner Avram Glazer, who has poured $350,000 into the Biden Victory Fund since last April. Kirk Wagar, a prominent Miami Shores-based Democratic donor, put the maximum allowed $6,600 into Biden’s campaign in September, the same day he gave $25,000 to Biden’s joint fundraising committee.

The president’s visit to Florida comes just days after his wife, First Lady Jill Biden, spoke at a Biden Victory Fund reception in Palm Harbor over the weekend. Biden himself has come to the state five times already since he became president, stopping in most recently last September to tour the damage left by Hurricane Idalia.

Alexander Heckler, deputy national finance chair for the DNC and Biden Victory Fund, said donors would continue to back Biden’s reelection bid regardless of the political hurdles in Florida, but insisted that the state is still in play for the president.

“We are proud to again host President Biden in Miami,” Heckler said. “We are happy to send our continued financial support whether or not we send our 30 electoral college votes. But, I am confident that Florida is still in play and that Democrats will invest here.”

Biden isn’t the only 2024 hopeful making a fundraising pitch in Florida this week. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who’s challenging former President Donald Trump for the Republican nomination, will be in Palm Beach on Wednesday, according to multiple reports.

Biden’s campaign has already made clear that winning Florida and its 30 electoral votes isn’t a make-or-break for his reelection chances. He lost the state in 2020 to Trump by a 3-point margin — a relative landslide in a state where presidential elections have often been decided by 1 percentage point or less.

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Since then, Republicans have only increased their dominance. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis scored a staggering 20-point reelection win in 2022, while the GOP won supermajorities in both chambers of the state legislature.

Voter registration data released by the state last week showed that there are now nearly 780,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats — a stunning advantage that would have seemed unthinkable to many Florida political operatives a decade ago, when there were nearly 450,000 more registered Democratic voters than Republican voters.

Biden’s team has suggested that they still see an opportunity to compete in Florida. The campaign launched a targeted ad campaign in Florida last summer as part of a $25 million national ad buy, and the president’s surrogates have repeatedly slammed the so-called “Florida Blueprint” — DeSantis’ oft-touted governing agenda — as a failed rightwing policy experiment.

Democrats are also hopeful that a proposed ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution will give their candidates a lift in November by driving up Democratic voter turnout. The ballot measure has already obtained enough signatures to appear on the ballot, but the state Supreme Court still has to rule on the language put forth in the proposal.

Still, Biden’s campaign is approaching Florida with caution, wary of pouring too much time and money into a state that has proved stubbornly difficult for Democrats to win in recent years. In an appearance earlier this month on former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s show on MSNBC, Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Muñoz noted that the president has “many pathways” to victory in November.

“I’m not going to read out a preview if Florida’s gonna be the one or not,” he said. “But I think we are very encouraged by the fact that there are a couple different ways we can win.”