WASHINGTON – When Vice President Mike Pence, on board Air Force Two on Wednesday, heard that former Vice President Joseph R. Biden jr. His planned trip to Milwaukee to accept the Democratic presidential nomination, he saw an opportunity.
Before returning to Washington for a day trip to Florida, Mr. Pence and the Trump campaign had already planned a political event for the Vice President of Wisconsin on August 19, according to two administration officials, in an attempt to fill a gap. thought Mr. Biden away in the battlefield state.
The decision to Mr. Pence flying to Wisconsin during the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, simply because Mr. Biden decided he would not go along, underscored the various political wagers the two campaigns are making.
The Trump campaign adopts by a wide margin in the polling stations in Wisconsin, and assumes that there is more politics to be gained by watching, speaking to a small audience and getting coverage from local television stations and newspapers. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, has chosen to stay away and view it as the responsible choice in the face of a public health crisis and discourage the recommendations of health officials traveling in the state.
A spokesman for Mr Biden, TJ Ducklo, mentioned Mrs’ planned trip. “It’s the perfect analogy for how this White House under his leadership and President Trump’s consistently puts their own political interests above the health and security of the American people,” Pence said of Wisconsin.
In Wisconsin, assistants to Mr. Pence also saw an opportunity to troll their opponent for past mistakes. “You’d think that for a party that didn’t show up four years ago, they learned their lessons and just came up,” Devin O’Malley, Mr Pence’s press secretary, said of Mr Biden’s decision to call his trip to Milwaukee off.
Trump campaign officials note that the last time a Democratic presidential nominee set foot in the state was November 5, 2012, when President Barack Obama gave a speech in Madison. She expressed surprise that Mr Biden would not just deliver a speech in Milwaukee in a television studio, for the pleasure of saying he was attending, and said they would add more events in the state to capitalize on the canceled Democracy convention.
Four years ago, Mr. Trump Wisconsin with less than 23,000 votes. Since then, the state has taken on symbolic importance to Democrats as one of the unforced mistakes of the 2016 campaign cycle, when Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic nominee, did not visit the state. In her memoir, “What Happened,” Ms. Clinton acknowledged that Wisconsin was “the one place we were caught by surprise,” but disputed Monday morning’s quarterback who blamed the loss on the fact that she was not there campaign.
Mr. Biden has led Mr. Trump in most of the state’s interviews. And Democrats in Wisconsin said they saw no evidence on the ground that voters wanted the convention to continue, like Mr. Biden to try, with the number of positive cases still growing.
“While we’re talking, people thank us for not coming out and knocking on their doors,” said Matt Moreno, chairman of the Waukesha County Democratic Party. “We listen to the scientists.”
He said drawing parallels to 2016 was “a great bite, but I see nothing on the ground to reflect what they say.”
Democratic strategists said the benefit the party hoped to gain by holding its convention in Milwaukee had already been lost, and that the further disadvantage of canceling Mr Biden’s speech was negative. “The greatest value of a convention is to bring in large numbers of volunteers from around the state who will then engage in the fall campaign,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Mr Obama. “Even before Biden’s decision, that advantage has been diminished by the scaled-down nature of the event.”
The Biden campaign has sought to create a virtual campaign in Wisconsin without holding physical events there. Mr. Biden has held online meetings and roundtables focused on Milwaukee and other parts of the state, and has been sitting for six interviews with local television stations in Milwaukee and Green Bay since April. The campaign also has 12 senior employees working in Wisconsin.
