Kamala Harris to visit Miami, Broward and Palm Beach on final weekend of early voting
Sen. Kamala Harris is coming back to Florida.
Joe Biden’s running mate will be in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties on Saturday, the second-to-last day of early voting, the Biden campaign announced Thursday. The campaign said additional details on Harris’s visit will be announced later.
The trip was announced two hours before Biden’s appearance at a drive-in rally in Broward County, Florida’s second-largest county where Democrats will need to push up voter turnout if they want to defeat President Donald Trump statewide. Trump and Biden are both holding events in Tampa on Thursday.
Harris last visited Florida on Oct. 19, the first day of in-person early voting, to host an early vote drive and rally in Orlando and a voter mobilization event in Jacksonville. She also visited Miami in September in her first Florida visit after being named as Biden’s vice presidential pick.
During the September visit, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, fanned out across Miami-Dade County, meeting with Black voters, college students, Jewish and Hispanic voters in a six-hour span. After that trip, the Biden campaign was criticized by some Haitian Americans for not including any Haitians in Harris’s discussion with African-American community leaders at Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens. South Florida is home to the country’s largest Haitian-American community.
Her Saturday appearances come as registered Republicans continue to outpace Democrats in early voting across the state. Registered Democrats have a lead over Republicans in vote-by-mail but the GOP’s early vote advantage has brought the Democrats’ overall advantage down to about 206,000 as of Thursday morning.
Republicans are expected to have an advantage among voters who show up on Election Day, while the final weekend of early voting is important for Democrats who need to build up the number of Hispanic and Black voters. Registered Democrats and Republicans can also cross party lines when they cast their votes creating an additional unknown factor for both parties.
On Sunday, Democrats across the state will hold rallies and marches in a get-out-the-vote effort known as “Souls to the Polls” after church services in majority Black neighborhoods.
