Biden campaign 'suppresses Hispanic vote' in Florida

It is not the only flaw mentioned in a letter sent to the Florida Coordinated Campaign's leadership that says that Biden's presidential campaign lacks a "fully actionable field plan".

Some 90 field organisers for the Florida Democratic Party have complained that Joe Biden's campaign is "suppressing the Hispanic vote", according to a letter obtained by the Miami Herald.

They say that four Puerto Rican organisers were moved from Central to North Florida. 

"The [campaign] is suppressing the Hispanic vote by removing Spanish-speaking organisers from Central Florida without explanation, which fails to confront a system of white-dominated politics we are supposed to be working against as organisers of a progressive party", the letter says.

The letter adds that with the November election looming, the organisation of Hispanic, Brazilian, and Haitian communities in the state has been neglected. "There are no targets, scripts, data infrastructure, community outreach, or phonebanks established for this", it says.

The organisers, on condition of anonymity, also shared with the newspaper that employees on the ground have been particularly mistreated by the state's Coordinated Campaign.

“The way you treat your lowest ranked employees says a lot about you as an organisation ... especially in electoral work, when organisers are the ones on the front lines, they ones you're asking to make 400 calls a day, the ones you're asking to make real connections with voters on the ground", one of the field organisers said.

Florida is one of the key "swing" states for the 2020 campaign. In 2016, President Donald Trump won it by a narrow margin of 1.2 points. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University says that Biden leads Trump 51 percent to 38 percent in the state.

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