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Joe Biden turns focus to Wisconsin with battle-tested hires

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Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

FILE - In this June 17, 2020, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting with small business owners in Yeadon, Pa. Biden is turning to a quartet of experienced Wisconsin political operatives to lead his campaign in a state that helped deliver President Donald Trump his Electoral College majority four years ago. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is turning to a quartet of experienced Wisconsin political operatives to lead his campaign in a state that helped deliver President Donald Trump an Electoral College majority four years ago.

The former vice presidentā€™s campaign unveiled the team to The Associated Press on Wednesday, a day ahead of Trump's planned visit to the state. Wisconsin, where Trump won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, joins newly emerging battleground Arizona as the first two states where Biden has named his campaign team.

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Two veterans of Sen. Tammy Baldwinā€™s successful 2018 reelection campaign will run Bidenā€™s Wisconsin operation. Danielle Melfi, who was Baldwinā€™s political engagement chief, is Bidenā€™s new state director. Scott Spector, who managed Baldwinā€™s campaign, will serve Biden as senior adviser.

Garren Randolph will be Melfiā€™s deputy. He served as political director for Wisconsin Gov. Tony Eversā€™ 2018 victory over then-incumbent Scott Walker, a Republican whom Democrats had tried twice before to knock out of office.

Shirley Ellis, a longtime adviser to U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, will join Biden team as a strategic adviser focused on Milwaukee. She currently runs Mooreā€™s district staff and is helping plan the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee. She will join Bidenā€™s campaign formally after the August convention, according to the campaign.

Baldwin praised the team as ā€œsome of the best Democratic talent Wisconsin has to offer,ā€ and she singled out Melfi and Spector for ā€œunparalleled knowledgeā€ of how to win in the closely divided state.

Democratsā€™ Wisconsin operation will be based in Milwaukee. Randolph and Ellis are Black and will play key roles in the city, where a large portion of the stateā€™s Black population lives.

The latest announcements are part of the battleground rollout that campaign manager Jen Oā€™Malley Dillon has promised for weeks. Top Biden advisers said theyā€™ve intentionally recruited state leadership teams with previous relevant success.

In Arizona, Bidenā€™s senior adviser Andrew Piatt managed freshman Sen. Kyrsten Sinemaā€™s campaign. Bidenā€™s Arizona state director is Jessica MejĆ­a, whoā€™d previously run his primary campaign in California, where he finished a surprisingly strong second as part of his Super Tuesday surge that saw him win 10 out of 14 state primaries and take control of the Democratic nominating fight.

Together, the first two states disclosed reflect Bidenā€™s dual approach to building an Electoral College majority ā€“ Wisconsin as one of the Upper Midwest states that slipped away from Democrats in 2016, Arizona as a rapidly shifting Sun Belt state that has been a GOP lock for decades. Itā€™s part of what Oā€™Malley Dillon touts as an ā€œexpanded mapā€ with ā€œmultiple pathsā€ to the required 270 electoral votes.

Yet Oā€™Malley Dillon has had to reassure nervous Democrats who remember Hillary Clintonā€™s 2016 campaign devoting resources to states including Arizona and Georgia, only to fail there while also losing Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania by fewer than 100,000 votes combined. Those three states handed Trump the White House despite Clintonā€™s national popular-vote advantage of nearly 3 million.

The Wisconsin team, especially, is intended to show that the Biden campaignā€™s talk of a wide map isnā€™t at the exclusion of traditional battlegrounds.

Recruiting from Baldwinā€™s team pulls in architects of Wisconsin Democratsā€™ most successful campaign in decades. Baldwin entered 2018 on every national list of vulnerable Democratic incumbents. She won by double digits, putting together Democratsā€™ ideal coalition in the state: strong minority and liberal turnout in the cities, expanded support in battleground suburbs where Trump has lost ground and limited GOP margins across the rest of the state.

Baldwin won about 90,000 more votes statewide than Clinton won two years before ā€“- an impressive feat given that presidential elections typically have considerably higher turnout than midterm elections. Notably, Baldwin won several southwestern Wisconsin counties that Trump flipped in 2016 from President Barack Obamaā€™s 2012 footprint.

Bidenā€™s emphasis on Milwaukee, meanwhile, reflects Oā€™Malley Dillonā€™s insistence that reclaiming Democratsā€™ Upper Midwest ā€œBlue Wallā€ isnā€™t just about white voters in small towns. In 2016, Clinton won Milwaukee County by an even wider percentage margin than Obama managed in 2012. But her raw vote total in the stateā€™s most Democrat-rich county fell about 39,000 votes shy of Obamaā€™s ā€” far exceeding her statewide deficit to Trump.

Both major parties have prioritized Wisconsin. A fundraising agreement between the DNC and the Biden campaign supports a field staffer dedicated to young voters, a digital director and communications aides, with the DNC separately supporting additional staff. DNC officials said the operation has knocked on at least 50,000 doors so far.

Trump's campaign said it has expanded its staff from 2016 and already has made 6 million voter contacts, meaning it has reached targeted voters multiple times. The campaign has hosted 750 ā€œMAGA Meet-upsā€ drawing 9,000 supporters, along with 650 training sessions for about 3,200 volunteers. The president is scheduled to be in Green Bay on Thursday for a televised town hall hosted by Fox News personality and Trump ally Sean Hannity.

___

Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, ā€œGround Game.ā€ ___ This story has been corrected to show the Biden aide's surname is Randolph, not Rudolph.


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