Inside President Joe Biden’s reelection headquarters here, a sign boasts of some of the campaign’s most significant metrics: Pennsylvania, 24; Michigan, 30; Wisconsin 44.
These are not poll numbers, but rather the latest – and growing – tally of campaign offices already open in three battleground states. It’s a rare bright spot in Biden’s rematch with former President Donald Trump and the most tangible example of how the campaign is using its fundraising muscle to build an entirely different operation from four years ago.
“Our job at this point is to build infrastructure in all of our pathways to victory,” said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign’s battleground states director. “Razor-thin margins in lots of these states, and I want to press the advantage against Donald Trump. They have not built field infrastructure. They have not had a presence in these states.”
Four years after the pandemic upended the 2020 presidential election, Kanninen and a growing team of advisers are looking to send an unmistakable message with the latest effort: This is no Biden basement campaign.
A sprawling organization, with a mix of brick-and-mortar offices and fresh technology to connect people, stands in contrast to Biden’s Zoom calls and drive-in rallies of the 2020 race.
“We’re not sitting in court,” Kanninen said, nodding to Trump’s hush money trial in New York that has largely kept him off the campaign trail in recent weeks. “Infrastructure, in terms of the staff and what we are building, and the cash advantage is something that we want to push everywhere.”
In a race that could again hinge on tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states, the strength of the dueling campaign operations is coming into sharper focus six months before the election. Republicans in several battleground states told CNN that Trump is far behind what the Biden team is building, pointing to steep disadvantages in fundraising and local organizing. For years, several state GOP operations have been beset by internal controversies that have drained resources and raised questions about get-out-the-vote operations, from Arizona to Michigan and beyond.
A Trump adviser dismissed those concerns, telling CNN that the campaign would have “the message, operation and money to win.”
“We have paid staffers and volunteer-powered field programs in every battleground state, and they are expanding daily,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign. “Our aggressive and experienced operation is focused on turning out votes and highlighting the contrast between Joe Biden’s weakness and failures with President Trump’s record of success.”
Back to ‘the old-fashioned way’
While the campaign is unfolding with the same two major candidates on a familiar map of battleground states as 2020, the race is far from a sequel. Several distinct issues – from immigration to abortion rights to the Israel-Hamas war – are driving the conversation, and the size of the Biden organization is incomparable to four years ago when the campaign shuttered its Philadelphia headquarters and worked virtually after the pandemic began.
“It’s going to get down to knocking on doors the old-fashioned way,” Biden told volunteers and staffers at a Democratic office in Milwaukee last month. “No, it really is.”
As he travels across the country, the president has made several visits to field offices that didn’t exist four years ago and often exudes confidence at the elaborate operation that bears his name.
“We’re going to beat him again,” Biden said to campaign staffers, pausing for an enthusiastic burst of applause during a stop in Nevada. “But here’s the deal, you’re the ones who are going to do it. It’s all blocking and tackling and making the case face-to-face with voters.”
The traditional campaign office is alive again – 133 and counting – much to the delight of loyal Biden volunteers like Ann Glass, who came to see the opening of the Philadelphia office.
“During the 2020 election, we canvassed, knocking on doors, running back six feet. Now, it’s nice to know we’ll be able to have face-to-face contact,” Glass said. “We did a good job four years ago. We can do a better job this time.”
The Trump and Biden campaigns took dramatically diverging approaches to getting out the vote in 2020, with the latter largely embracing Covid-19 safety protocols. But Democrats are eager to get past them.
“If we don’t go talk to people – unmasked – they’re not going to bother to leave their houses to go vote this time,” said Sue Jacobs, a Biden volunteer in Pennsylvania.
Lessons learned
The Biden campaign is working to create a hybrid system of campaigning – weaving together some lessons from before the pandemic and others from after – to take political organizing to the next level. One of those lessons: building better and more campaign offices.
“I’m blown away by how beautiful it is,” Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said at the opening of a downtown Philadelphia office. “If the president was here, he often says he hasn’t had campaign offices this nice, but we know it’s critical.”
Opening field offices in nearby places like Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, which Biden lost to Trump by 16 points in 2020 and is expected to fall short again, not only increases the president’s visibility but also is intended to drive down his margin of defeat.
“We want to be wherever you can win a voter,” said Kanninen, a veteran operative who worked on the Obama-Biden campaigns in 2008 and 2012. “You have to go compete in places that you otherwise might not win, but you want to lose 60-40 instead of 70-30. An office setting, having volunteers there connecting with folks in a real way, makes a big difference.”
For all of the challenges facing Biden, who is locked in a remarkably difficult contest with Trump, a robust organization is designed to help level the playing field and extend an advantage to the president. Even among Democrats who have been privately critical of Biden, the size of the campaign operation is seen as a leading attribute.
The principal campaign committee for Biden entered April with $88.5 million in its war chest, federal election records show, while Trump’s main campaign account had $45.1 million. The disparity underscores the vastly different campaign structures the rivals are building.
“The advantage that we have both on time – we’re not sitting in court – and infrastructure and the cash advantage is something that we want to push everywhere,” Kanninen said. “This is not something that you can do overnight. It takes months to do properly, and the Trump campaign cannot buy that time back.”
CNN’s Alison Main contributed to this report.
