In trip to Superior, Wisconsin, Joe Biden looks to regain a key Democratic stronghold

SUPERIOR – As Donald Trump inches closer to capturing the Republican nomination for president, President Joe Biden returned to an area of the country decimated by industrial outsourcing and emblematic of the fight before him.

Biden on Thursday visited the Wisconsin border city of Superior in the northwestern corner of the state, across Lake Superior's St. Louis Bay from Duluth, Minn. — two blue communities, known as the Twin Ports, that used to rely on heavy industry and mining. Now they are surrounded by an area that has grown more favorable to Trump as those jobs have evaporated.

"This was the rock-solid Democratic core," said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey School and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. "Over the last 20 years or so, that stronghold is gone."

Biden spoke to supporters gathered at Earth Rider Brewery in Superior and seized on economic trends showing growth outpacing the fall of inflation, touting his administration's work to boost job creation by focusing on infrastructure projects — including a new $1 billion plan to replace a key bridge connecting the Twin Ports.

"Things are finally starting to sink in," Biden said to the crowd of his economic message reaching voters.

"This bridge is important, but the story we're writing is much bigger than that. When you see shovels in the ground and cranes in the sky, and people hard at work on these projects, I hope you feel a renewed sense of pride."

Biden is seeking to boost voters' views of his handling of economic issues in part by focusing on projects that will create jobs in sectors squeezed by outsourcing.

He used the visit to announce new funding to replace the 60-year-old Blatnik Bridge on Interstate 535 that connects Superior to Duluth. Funding for the bridge, which spans St. Louis Bay, will come from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and is part of a $4.9 billion investment toward 37 transportation infrastructure projects across the country.

"For decades people talked about replacing this bridge, but it never got done — until today," Biden said in his eighth trip to Wisconsin as president.

"We started investing in America again," Biden said. "Our infrastructure used to be the best in the world ... but over a period of time we stopped investing in America. We stopped investing in ourselves."

The funding for the projects, which Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg this week called "the next generation of the cathedrals of American infrastructure" that will help shape the economy, also includes $8 million to expand a safety rest stop for trucks on I-90 in Sparta.

The investment for the Blatnik Bridge is the largest of the projects Biden highlighted Thursday. The bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day and billions of dollars in freight each year, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Biden said Thursday the project is expected to create 10,000 new jobs.

The jobs message is critical in this region, Jacobs said.

"Jobs are a huge challenge in this part of Minnesota and Wisconsin," Jacobs said. "Trump has used that to his advantage. The protectionism platform that Trump had and has played beautifully to this area. It's just the kind of thing that he can use to appeal to independents and folks who might have been Democrat at one point."

"In other parts of the country, there's a lot of criticism of Trump over the 2020 election denialism, immigration, and other things, but in this part of the country, it's really suffered dramatic economic decline," he added.

Biden's stop is one of three in Wisconsin from the president or a top administration official just this week — signaling a hard focus on the battleground state he won four years ago as the 2024 election kicks into gear. Vice President Kamala Harris in a visit to Waukesha County Monday made clear abortion rights would remain central in the race for the White House, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to arrive in Milwaukee Friday to highlight Biden's job-creation efforts.

The president has put recent economic growth and investments in infrastructure at the forefront of his bid to retain the White House, though many Americans, including those in Wisconsin, remain skeptical and have not credited him with the improvements. A Marquette University Law Poll of Wisconsin voters from November found that just 27% of respondents described the economy as “excellent” or “good” while 36% described it as “not so good” and 37% labeled it “poor.”

Still, the economy has improved in the last several months, with the inflation rate receding as the impacts of the COVID pandemic slowly fade. The national unemployment rate has hovered around 3.7%, and in Wisconsin, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.6% at the start of 2021 to 3.3% at the beginning of this year, according to the White House.

Biden and his team, meanwhile, have consistently tried to send that message of improvement and investment directly to voters, largely through stops like Thursday's in Superior.

"We believe that the president is the best messenger," Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "If he can go into a state, a rural area, go into Superior, Wisconsin, talk about a project that we invested in because of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, something that the president fought for… I think that’s important."

Republicans hit Biden on inflation, border security

Wisconsin Republicans ahead of Biden's visit, however, sought to dispel those notions and attempted to paint the former president as desperate to win over voters in the swing state.

"Look, there's a reason we're getting all this tourism in Wisconsin from the White House," Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Brian Schimming told reporters Thursday. "And that is not that we all know that President Biden will lose Wisconsin in November. It's because he's lost Wisconsin already."

Schimming cited higher grocery prices Wisconsinites have seen over the past several years. And both Schimming and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin pointed to the U.S.-Mexico border as a major issue Biden needs to deal with. Johnson Thursday morning dismissed a GDP report that showed the economy grew 3.1% over the last year, saying "the damage has already been done and people are feeling it."

"I hope people have their eyes open and realize what a disaster his governance has been for their lives, their family, their well-being and for this nation," Johnson told the Journal Sentinel.

Rep. Tom Tiffany, whose northwestern Wisconsin district includes Superior, said it was "great" that the Blatnik Bridge was going to be improved but said it shouldn't cost $1 billion in federal funds to do so, attacking Biden for being "hostile to mining" and over how the government approves new infrastructure projects. Tiffany voted against the infrastructure bill.

Biden likely picked the area to also motivate Democrats in Duluth, Minnesota's fifth-most populous city where Biden's support remains strong, Jacobs, the University of Minnesota professor, said.

"If Joe Biden is gonna win Minnesota again ... they're going to need Duluth's support and they're going to need good turnout in Duluth" in order to trim support for Trump in the area, he said. Jacobs said coupled with double-digit support Biden received in Wisconsin's Douglas, Bayfield and Ashland counties in 2020, the visit is "a strategic, efficient trip."

Biden carried Wisconsin in 2020 by about 21,000 votes and carried Minnesota by more than 230,000. Since then, his approval rating in both states has hovered in the 40s.

Debby Strop, co-owner of Uncle Loui's Cafe in Duluth, told the Journal Sentinel on Thursday she does not identify with either major party but appreciates Biden's visit.

"I'm glad he's here. It shows he really cares. If he didn't why would he be here?" she said, noting the cold and foggy weather. Despite this, Strop said she doesn't want either Trump or Biden to run. Their age is a major issue for her.

Afton Iliff, a 21-year-old Duluth resident who works as a heavy-equipment operator and will work on the bridge replacement project, told the Journal Sentinel she was not aware of who was running for president this year but didn't support either candidate when informed.

"I don't like either of them. Biden is way too old and Trump is a horrible person," Iliff said. "The people in office are too old. They're not even going to see the changes they are voting for. They're older than sliced bread."

Iliff said she doesn't identify with either political party and is unsure if she'll vote in 2024. 

Small Democratic cities like Superior were an ingredient in Trump’s victory in Wisconsin — cities like Janesville, Platteville, Portage, Prairie du Chien, Ashland, Kenosha, Washburn, Beloit, Black River Falls and Baraboo. Trump lost these cities but by less than Republicans did in 2012, which made them a key to his narrow 2016 victory of about 23,000 votes over Hillary Clinton.

But these same communities that were such a disappointment to Democrats could pose a major challenge to Trump’s reelection because these cities have been swinging back toward the Democratic Party since 2016. Many have reverted to their “pre-Trump” voting patterns, performing solidly for Democrats in the 2018 midterms and in more recent elections as well. 

"He can kind of take these two isolated blue islands in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin and try to start building support and mobilizing voters," Jacobs said.

Samantha Woodward of USA Today and Laura Schulte of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

Molly Beck and Lawrence Andrea can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com and landrea@gannett.com.