AP: “Joe Biden is making his first trip to Florida as the Democratic presidential nominee, while his campaign is acknowledging concerns about his appeal with Latinos, a voting bloc likely to prove pivotal against President Donald Trump in one of the nation’s fiercest battleground states. On Tuesday, the former vice president will hold a roundtable with veterans in Tampa before marking Hispanic Heritage Month with an event in Kissimmee near Orlando. The visit comes as some Democrats worry that Biden’s standing among Hispanics is slipping in a state where they make up one-fifth of eligible voters. ‘I will talk about how I am going to work like the devil to make sure I turn every Latino and Hispanic vote,’ Biden said after a Monday speech on climate change in his home state of Delaware.”

“Biden doesn’t need to win Florida to capture the White House as long as he reclaims the upper Midwestern states that Trump flipped in 2016. But Trump’s path to reelection is virtually nonexistent if he loses Florida, which is why Democrats are focused on it. A recent NBC-Marist poll found Latinos in the state about evenly divided between Biden and Trump. Democrat Hillary Clinton led Trump by a 59% to 36% margin among Latinos in the same poll in 2016 — and Trump won Florida by about 1 percentage point. Biden, who hasn’t been to Florida since last October, has struggles with Latinos that stem in part from the policies of the Obama administration. The former vice president said during the Democratic primary that he regretted the record-setting number of deportations when President Barack Obama was in the White House.”