POLITICO NIGHTLY: The DNC’s top Latina on Biden’s Hispanic outreach

 

Aug 19, 2020   BY RENUKA RAYASAM Presented by Facebook With help from Myah Ward NIGHT 3 — For the speeches by Kamala Harris and Barack Obama, plus instant analysis, chats with POLITICO reporters and interviews with newsmakers, head to POLITICO’s convention hub: politico.com/dnc. Pregame starts with a live episode of “Four Square” at 8:30 pm ET. 'THIS IS OUR TIME' — New Mexico’s Michelle Lujan Grisham, the first Latina Democrat to be elected governor and a former Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair, is speaking tonight at the Democratic National Convention. Grisham, who was said to be on the long list to be Joe Biden’s running mate, could now be angling for the job of secretary of Health and Human Services. New Mexico’s record on Covid is her biggest selling point. The state’s positive test ratio is around 3 percent , less than a fifth of neighboring Texas and Arizona. The state had a drive-through testing site set up by the time President Donald Trump declared the pandemic a national emergency. She’s also part of Biden’s effort to reach Hispanic voters — after Eva Longoria, Grisham is likely to get the most speaking time of any Hispanic speaker at the convention. We spoke today about how New Mexico kept its Covid rate down, whether Biden is doing enough to reach Hispanic voters and whether Julián Castro was snubbed. This conversation has been edited. Do you think Biden has done enough to reach Latino and Hispanic voters? I’m going to broaden your question. I hope you don't mind. Most candidates have not really engaged the growing Hispanic communities and Latino communities across the country. What do you plan to talk about tonight? I get a unique opportunity to showcase New Mexico, both our Covid response and our smart, effective transition to renewable energy. Then immediately talk to Americans about the Biden plan for a clean energy future and worldwide leadership that saves our planet. How has New Mexico kept its Covid rate down? Early we said, it’s got to be a mandatory mask mandate everywhere. The second thing: We’ve done well because we test so aggressively. We’ve been in the top states for testing. I personally go after testing, supplies, commodities on the front end to swabs and then on the back end, reagents. We were one of the first states to say asymptomatic individuals need to be tested. That allowed us to do rapid responses. We go out immediately to a business or an organization that's got an infection. We clean it up, we work with them, we often close them down. We think we’re going to be the first state in the nation to be able to show a very limited, hybrid K through 5 in-person education approach that really mitigates risk to students and educators and their families. I'm cautiously optimistic that we're gonna be able to do that effectively because of our Covid success. Do you wish more Latino and Hispanic people were speaking at the convention this week? I appreciate that this is a campaign that is open to that criticism and is talking about it. For the first time in a long time, we've got a pretty deep, wide bench of Latinos, Latinas and Hispanic leaders, advocates, entrepreneurs, elected leaders, all across the country. I want to celebrate that we have such remarkable leaders. Having Julián Castro as a serious presidential contender, I’m not sure that a decade ago I would have said I would see that in my lifetime. I’m seeing record numbers of Hispanic members of Congress, women and men being elected all across the country. I think that this is our time. And we need to build on that, not tear it all down, when absolutely there will always be challenges to getting enough of our voices heard. Do you think Julián Castro should be speaking this week? There’s no doubt, add a full day, we could have been chock full of any number of incredible, iconic, Hispanic, Latino leaders. I’m always disappointed that we don’t showcase more. I think in the context of getting the messages across to voters, the Biden campaign is doing a fine job. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly: Coronavirus Special Edition. Oh the Germans, now requiring owners to walk their dogs twice a day. Reach out rrayasam@politico.com or on Twitter at @renurayasam.   A message from Facebook: Facebook launches new Voting Information Center. Facebook is building the largest voter information effort in US history, starting with the new Voting Information Center, where you can find the latest resources about voting in the 2020 election. Our goal is to help register 4 million voters. Explore our new Voting Information Center now.   Guests watch television coverage of the virtual Democratic National Convention at a party in Pittsburgh. | Getty Images FIRST IN NIGHTLY THE GOP’S QUIET VOTE-BY-MAIL PUSH — President Donald Trump may rail against mail-in ballots in public, but state and local Republicans are quietly telling Americans that’s exactly how they should vote, White House correspondent Anita Kumar writes. In Iowa, the Republican Party mailed absentee ballot applications to voters without waiting for requests. In Pennsylvania, the GOP’s website promotes voting by mail: “Vote Safe: By mail. From home.” And in Ohio, the Republican Party sent mailers with Trump’s photo saying “Join President Trump and Vote by Absentee Ballot.” Tens of millions of Americans will cast their ballot for president by mail this year — many in Republican-dominated states and swing states where Republican turnout is crucial for Trump — as the coronavirus outbreak keeps Americans at home. And it won’t be the first time. More than 33 million Americans — nearly one in four — voted by mail in Trump’s first successful election in 2016. “Vote by mail really works well here in Utah,” said Justin Lee, director of elections in Utah, where the Republican administration sends ballots to every voter in the state. “We do feel it’s safe and secure. We don’t feel there are any real instances of either widespread fraud or voter disenfranchisement.” Many Republicans are outwardly careful not to address Trump’s remarks, but privately they worry his escalating accusations of fraud could scare reliable supporters from voting remotely. New polling has fueled these concerns and Democrats are outpacing Republican requests for absentee ballots in some swing states. Trump frequently attempts to distinguish between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots, saying the latter has additional safeguards and only go to those who request them (election officials say the ballots look identical). Trump’s own campaign has been focused on absentee ballots, targeting counties in battleground states where they made a difference in 2016, and urging supporters through a website to request ballots, according to a person familiar with the plans. But across the country, the distinction between mail-in ballots and absentee ballots appears negligible.   PLUG IN WITH PLAYBOOK AT THE DNC : Join POLITICO Playbook Co-authors Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman from Aug. 18 to 20 for "Plug in with Playbook," our new political show making its virtual debut at this year's conventions. Get the latest developments on presumptive nominee Joe Biden's campaign, analysis of down-ballot races, a look at this cycle’s swing states, along with other election-related updates. Featured guests include DNC chair Tom Perez, convention CEO Joe Solmonese, Biden campaign senior adviser Symone Sanders, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and others. WATCH LIVE.     COVID-2020 HOW TO PLAY PA — The Trump and Biden campaigns will be spending plenty of time and money in Pennsylvania, a key swing state in November. Eugene Daniels, and Pennsylvania natives Charlie Mahtesian and Holly Otterbein talk about the state and its electoral dynamics in the latest edition of the New Swing State Map. Mr. and Mrs. 44 — It might be Biden's convention, but Michelle and Barack Obama are the stars. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza breaks down why Michelle's speech wowed viewers Monday — and what to expect from Biden's former boss tonight. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast FROM THE HEALTH DESK TRACING THE QUAD — Colleges across the country are testing contact-tracing apps, hoping that tech-savvy students accustomed to sharing so much of their life online will embrace the digital tool as densely populated campuses try to reopen. Tracing apps, announced with great fanfare early in the coronavirus pandemic, haven’t yet been in widespread use because of bureaucratic hurdles, tech hiccups and public apprehension about privacy risks, Mohana Ravindranath and Amanda Eisenberg write. But the contained environment of college campuses may be the ideal testing ground to boost the lagging digital effort to trace infections, say state officials and public health experts. “It’s clear across the entire United States that this is probably going to have to happen at the university level,” said Joyce Schroeder, a University of Arizona professor leading on-campus deployment of Covid Watch, an app that uses tracing technology developed by Apple and Google.       ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asked you: How have your convention viewing plans shifted with the changes in format and location? Do you plan on watching more or less? Do you have any traditions that you've had to alter or cancel? Send us your thoughts, and we'll include select responses in Friday's edition. NIGHTLY NUMBER 3.8 billion The number of views attracted by groups and pages that spread misleading health news on Facebook in the past year, nonprofit activist group Avaaz said in a report today. The bogus claims drew far more traffic than authoritative sources on topics like Covid-19. THE GLOBAL FIGHT OSLO LOSES CRUISE CONTROL — Norway’s attempt to relaunch its cruise industry has already hit the rocks. An apparent breakdown in quarantine processes on a Norwegian cruise ship touring the Arctic led to a spike in cases of Covid-19, the hospitalization of six crew members and a countrywide scramble to track down passengers who might have carried the virus back to their home areas. Two weeks after the first reports of the coronavirus outbreak on the MS Roald Amundsen operated by cruise company Hurtigruten, Norway’s government has banned cruise ships carrying more than 100 passengers from docking at Norwegian ports and a police investigation into the incident is underway, Charlie Duxbury reports. “My impression is that Hurtigruten didn’t follow the regulations and they have also themselves admitted that they didn’t follow all the regulations,” Bent Høie, Norway’s minister of health, said in an interview. “That has put employees and passengers at risk of infection.”   INTRODUCING POLITICO MINUTES: An unprecedented campaign season demands an unconventional approach to news coverage. POLITICO Minutes is a new, interactive content experience that reveals the top takeaways you need to know in an easy-to-digest, swipeable format delivered straight to your inbox. Get a breakdown of what's been learned so far, why it matters, and what to watch for going forward. Sign up for POLITICO Minutes, launching at the 2020 Conventions.     PARTING WORDS THE LAST CONVENTIONS? If you tuned into the Biden Nominating Show on any of the networks this week, you got to witness the national political convention approaching the vanishing point of relevancy it has been steadily vectoring toward for a half-century, senior media writer Jack Shafer writes. Once lusty, contentious affairs in which punches were literally traded on the floor — as happened between Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower delegates at the 1952 Republican confab in Chicago — the political conventions have grown more contrived, less dramatic, utterly propagandistic, and now, thanks to Covid-19, absolutely virtual. Ever since the TV networks started crashing the parties’ parties in the 1950s, the conventions have increasingly become scripted and stage-managed events designed to present their candidates’ best profiles to the nation. The parties made a conscious decision to drain the excitement and hazard out of their convention and began to manufacture them for television presentation, thrusting the party and its nominee’s best profile into the public eye. But a funny thing happened. As the networks encouraged the parties more and more to make their conventions more televisable, and they gladly did, television became less and less interested in televising them. This week, the broadcast networks have limited themselves to an hour of prime time, leaving the cable networks and the streaming channels to feed the swill at the bottom of the can to the politically insatiable. Tuesday night’s production contained all the excitement of a telethon only without the running tote board of donations. Bill Clinton croaked through a Biden testimonial. Bernie Sanders’ name was placed in nomination for … posterity, I guess. Everybody yelled at Donald Trump. Biden, who had won the nomination months ago, took official possession of it after a virtual roll call. If the old-time conventions had the spontaneity and spunk of an off-tune high school marching band, the 2020 Democratic National Convention sounded like a cheap Casio keyboard bleating out flat synth notes. It is almost as if the Democrats in charge of staging this thing watched thousands of hours of reality TV to learn the secrets of TV engagement so they could ignore those lessons and instead produce the most anodyne TV fare possible. Viewers rejected the show, according to Nielsen. The Democrats’ first night drew only 19.7 million viewers, a 24 percent decline from 2016.   A message from Facebook: How Facebook is preparing for the US 2020 election — Launched new Voting Information Center — More than tripled our safety and security teams to 35,000 people — Implemented 5-step political ad verification — Providing greater political ad transparency Learn about these efforts and more.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam   FOLLOW US

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