President Joe Biden will vote early in Wilmington, Delaware, this weekend with his granddaughter Natalie while other prominent Democrats, including Jill Biden and Barack Obama, are on the campaign trail.
Biden will cast his midterm ballot with Natalie Biden, 18, who is a first time voter. She is the daughter of the president’s late son Beau. President Biden took her on a tour of the University of Pennsylvania earlier this month as the high school senior looks at colleges.
With less than two weeks to go before the congressional election that will shape the next two years of the presidency, Biden will be spending a long weekend in his hometown.
Meanwhile, first lady Jill Biden and former President Barack Obama will be out on the stump for Democrats as polls show Republicans have momentum to win the House. The Senate is seen as more up for grabs.
Biden faces low approval ratings, which has made him an albatross for some Democratic candidates, who have distanced themselves from his presidency.
Jill Biden is proving a popular surrogate for the administration. And Obama is bringing in his star power to try and help Biden avoid the kind of ‘shellacking’ he received in the 2010 midterms, when Republicans gained 63 House seats.
President Joe Biden will vote early in Wilmington, Delaware, this weekend with his granddaughter Natalie; above he takes on a visit of University of Pennsylvania campus earlier this month
Jill Biden will be out campaigning for Democrats this weekend in New Hampshire and New York
Other Democrats are also hitting the campaign trail. Senator Bernie Sanders will hold get-out-the-vote events in Texas where Democrat Beto O’Rourke is trying to defeat Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
And Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been campaigning hard to keep the House. Republicans need to only net five seats to take the majority.
The White House didn’t respond when asked if President Biden would be doing virtual events for Democrats on Saturday or Sunday. On Wednesday night he did three virtual fundraisers from the White House. His Wilmington home is equipped from him to work from that location.
Biden arrived in Wilmington on Thursday evening after his event in Syracuse, New York.
He’ll work from there on Friday and then, in the evening, he’ll head to Philadelphia for a fundraiser for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. That event, where he’ll be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, is expected to bring in $1 million for the state party coffers.
The president will be in Wilmington through Monday, according to his White House schedule.
Jill Biden, meanwhile, heads to New Hampshire on Saturday to campaign for Democratic Senator Maggie Hansen.
Republicans see this contest as one of their best pickup opportunities. Hansen is making her first bid for re-election and polls show her lead on Republican Don Bolduc, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, is shrinking.
Then the first lady will be in New York on Sunday to campaign for embattled Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney and House candidate Robert Zimmerman.
Zimmerman and Republican candidate George Santos are both openly gay, making this the first known race to have two members of the LGBTQ community running against one another for a House seat. They are vying to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi.
And Republicans have flooded the Maloney race with money in an attempt to take down the congressman, who serves as the head of Democrats’ committee to re-elect House members.
The first lady will also participate in fundraisers in both states.
In an analysis this week, FiveThirtyEight noted momentum appeared to be on the Republicans’ side in the race for the House with 11 days to go until the election.
As recently as Oct. 13, Democrats had a slight edge on the generic congressional ballot. Now, however, Republicans have taken the lead, indicating voters’ mood had shifted to the right.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, will campaign for Democratic candidates in Detroit and Milwaukee on Saturday.
The former president will try to give a boost to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, both of whom are running for re-election.
He’ll also campaign with Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, who is challenging Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, a frequent critic of the Biden administration.
With the current Senate split 50-50 between the two parties, Vice President Kamala Harris gives Democrats the deciding vote.
Any Senate race could end up deciding which party controls the chamber for the next two years.
Barack Obama will campaign for Democratic candidates in Detroit and Milwaukee on Saturday
President Joe Biden will fundraise for Democrats Friday night and hit campaign trail next week with stops in Florida and New Mexico
President Biden will be on the campaign trail next week.
On Tuesday he heads to Florida to campaign for gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and Senate candidate Val Demings.
Crist is running against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been a bete noire for Biden on covid precautions and on the immigration issue.
Demings is challenging GOP Sen. Marco Rubio.
On Thursday Biden will be in New Mexico to help out Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who’s running for a second term.
Grisham was up 8 points in a PPP poll earlier this month, but was trailing Republican meteorologist Mark Ronchetti 47 to 46 in a Trafalgar poll this week. He lost a Senate race in his state in 2020 by just 6 percentage points with Biden on top of the ticket.
It was the first poll to show Ronchetti ahead and the first to show a close race.
Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Albuquerque last week to campaign with Lujan Grisham.