JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Florida will impose a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy beginning Wednesday, a day the Biden campaign hopes will start galvanizing enough Sunshine State voters who oppose the law to tip the increasingly GOP-leaning state back to the Democratic column in November.
The Biden campaign is saturating Florida in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for the six-week limit on abortion starting May 1.
Florida is the third-most populated state in the nation and the Biden campaign team is suddenly making a play for its 30 electoral votes.
If President Biden pulls off a win in Florida in November, his path to a second term would significantly improve.
The Biden campaign team isn’t wasting any time.
Mr. Biden visited Tampa last week, his second trip to the state this year, to highlight the looming limits on abortion.
The next day, the Biden campaign team opened a field office in Hillsborough County, with more offices to come “across the state,” campaign officials told The Washington Times.
Vice President Kamala Harris will visit Jacksonville on Wednesday for a campaign event “focused on the stakes of the election for reproductive freedom across the country.”
Ms. Harris will make the case that Mr. Biden’s GOP November rival, former President Donald Trump, is to blame for the new restrictions in Florida. They were ushered through the legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis after the Supreme Court tossed out Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
Florida will become one of three states with “heartbeat” abortion laws, which limit the procedure after a fetal heartbeat is detected at around six weeks of pregnancy.
It’s hardly the nation’s strictest limit on abortion.
Fourteen states impose a total ban, with some exceptions.
But Florida has suddenly become, among GOP-leaning states, vulnerable for Republicans thanks to the new abortion limits and a state ballot initiative that would reverse the six-week limit and bar any restrictions before fetal viability at 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Mr. Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020 and the state’s 2022 midterm elections held fast to the predicted “red wave,” thanks to a shift in the electorate that has added nearly 900,000 active GOP voters to the rolls. Republicans now outnumber Democrat voters by 7% in Florida.
Mr. Trump currently leads Mr. Biden in Florida by 10 points, according to an average of polls calculated by the nonpartisan website 538.
Despite the daunting numbers, the Biden campaign team believes the abortion issue and the ballot measure will draw out Democrats, independents and some moderate Republicans who will vote for the president because he pledged to reinstitute federal protections for the procedure.
The Biden campaign team believes it can also win over some of the 155,000 Republicans who voted for Nikki Haley in the GOP primary, mostly on the abortion issue.
“Donald Trump is worried voters are going to hold him accountable for the cruelty and chaos he’s created,” Mr. Biden told supporters in Tampa. “The bad news for Trump is that we are going to hold him accountable. He should be held accountable.”
Carl Cannon, election analyst and Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics, which aggregates polling data, said abortion has put Florida in play for the Biden team.
“I say we should move Florida into our swing-state list,” Mr. Cannon said during the RealClearPolitics radio show on SiriusXM.
If Mr. Biden pulls off a win in Florida and holds onto Pennsylvania, where polls show him tied or leading Mr. Trump, he could lose the rust-belt states, Arizona and Nevada, where polls show him trailing Mr. Trump, and still be elected to a second term.
“It’s a key state,” Mr. Cannon said of Florida. “The Republicans shouldn’t take it for granted.”
Mr. Trump in recent weeks aligned himself with the more moderate stance on abortion limits, which could offer him protection from Mr. Biden’s attacks in Florida and in states where the race is much closer, including Arizona, and Nevada. Mr. Trump said he won’t support a national ban on the procedure and earlier this year called Florida’s six-week ban “a terrible mistake.” In another interview, he said a 15-week limit “seems to be the number that people are agreeing at.”
A USA Today/Ipsos poll released earlier this month found three out of five registered voters in Florida favor a ballot measure expanding abortion access and more than half oppose the state’s six-week ban.
At the very least, Mr. Biden’s burgeoning campaign operations in the Sunshine State will force Mr. Trump’s campaign to spend money here to protect his lead.
Polling and political analyst Ron Faucheux said Mr. Biden’s campaign is taking an expensive gamble to compete in Florida, where it requires a lot of money and staffing to advertise and operate.
But Mr. Trump’s campaign cannot ignore the Biden campaign’s efforts in Florida.
“While the abortion issue is likely to help Biden, there are no guarantees it’s enough to make the state competitive. Democrats won’t know the full turnout effect of the abortion issue until the end of the campaign, when it may be too late to take action,” Mr. Faucheux said. “But that’s also true for Trump’s campaign. Will they have time to react if it does close up at the end?”