Jill Biden’s weekend included five flights, 11 events and three appearances with Democrats who all requested her help before the midterm elections. There was also a spin class in there somewhere.
During one particularly busy 27-hour chunk of time, Biden, the first lady, appeared in Atlanta, where voting rights activist Stacey Abrams is in an uphill race against Brian Kemp, the Republican governor. Then it was on to Florida, where she toured a breast cancer research facility and gave an interview to Newsmax, a conservative network. After that, she appeared with Rep Val Demings, D-Fla, who hopes to unseat Sen Marco Rubio, R-Fla, and Charlie Crist, a centrist Democrat, trails Gov Ron DeSantis, a conservative firebrand.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Biden, on the last leg of a 15-hour day, told a group of people at a second event to support Demings on Saturday. “But we know how to win because we’ve done it before.”
With President Joe Biden’s job approval hovering at about 40 per cent at a moment when Democrats are struggling to hold onto the House and Senate, Jill Biden, 71, has become a lifeline for candidates trying to draw attention and money but not the baggage that an appearance with her husband would bring.
According to a senior White House official, she is the most requested surrogate in the administration.
“She does not offend people in a way that a president can because she’s much less polarising and political,” said Michael LaRosa, a communications strategist and her former press secretary. “It’s why she was sent all over rural Iowa and New Hampshire during the campaign and why she can go places now that the president can’t.”
Modern first ladies are usually relied on to humanise their husbands or translate their policies, but how much they decide to engage is almost always up to them. Melania Trump was more popular than her husband, Donald, and was a much-requested surrogate, but she did not campaign for him during the 2018 midterms or during the 2020 campaign, often saying she was too busy parenting her son or tied up with her own engagements as first lady.
Michelle Obama was largely viewed as a secret weapon for Democrats before the 2010 midterms, when she campaigned with personal stories about her family. But she spent large stretches of time away from politics, and her popularity was not able to counter the losses the Democrats sustained in the House and Senate that year.
There are risks involved for women who try to do too much: When Democrats lost their House majority in 1994, enough people blamed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s efforts to reinvent health care that she publicly apologized.
As first lady, Biden has traveled to 40 states, and lately, she has tucked a plethora of political visits into trips that spotlight her policy interests. On Thursday, she taught a full day of classes at Northern Virginia Community College before flying to Fort Benning in Georgia, where she visited with military families.
Her political appearances began Friday evening, when she stood in the foyer of a home with Abrams and asked about 75 attendees, mostly women, to step closer to her. Then she took aim at Kemp and the policies that he supports, including a law he signed that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and another that limits voting access.
“I know that makes you angry,” she told them. “And it should make you angry.”
Her presence is not just a morale boost for Democrats in close races: She is a fundraising draw who appeals to grassroots supporters, and people are more likely to donate if she’s asking, according to a spokesperson who works for the Democratic National Committee who was not authorized to speak publicly. Her events, emails, text messages and mailings have drawn millions of dollars for Democrats.
In Atlanta, she told her audience that she knew they had already donated, but “I’m asking you to dig a little deeper.” (Each had already paid at least $1,000 to attend the event.) The whole appearance took about 20 minutes, and then she was on the road to the next event, slipping out through a kitchen door with a coterie of aides.
By Saturday morning, Biden was in Florida — her second visit there this month — where she started the day on a bike at a spin studio in Fort Lauderdale with several aides.
Then she stopped for a coffee (black, no sugar) with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla, in Fort Lauderdale before the two of them toured a breast cancer research facility.
Biden delivered an interview focused on breast cancer awareness with the host of a show on Newsmax, then she flew to Orlando, where she appeared with Crist and Demings in front of City Hall, clasping hands and holding their arms up in a victory gesture.
The first lady has long been thought of in Biden world as a “closer”: a surrogate they rely on to travel to corners of the country that her husband cannot easily reach, ideologically or geographically. White House officials believe she appeals to suburban women and can communicate to Americans “beyond the Twitterverse and cable news chatter,” according to Elizabeth Alexander, her communications director.
Compared with her husband, Biden is the more disciplined communicator. Her missteps, which are rare, have occurred not off the cuff but during the speeches she works to commit to memory. Over the summer, she was criticised when she compared the diversity of the Hispanic community to the breadth of breakfast taco options available in Texas.
Polling shows that Americans have mixed feelings about her. A CNN survey this summer found that about 34 per cent of Americans had a favourable opinion of her, compared with 29 per cent who said their view was unfavorable. Almost as many people — 28 per cent — had no opinion, and 9 per cent said they had never heard of her.
In speeches designed to warm up a crowd and draw laughs, she shared several snapshots of her life story: “When I first met Joe, I felt really kind of out of touch with his world in DC,” she said. “On our first date, I remember saying, ‘Thank God I voted for him.’ ” - New York Times
Katie Rogers
The writer is a White House correspondent for NYT
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