Clinton In Florida, Talks Jobs & Zika
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MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) - Democratic presidential nominee, and former First Lady, Hillary Clinton is spending the first part of the week in central and southern Florida.
On Monday, Clinton will tour 3 Daughters Brewery, a small business in St. Petersburg, and then attend jobs rallies hosted by the Florida Democratic Party. During a stop in Kissimmee, she's expected to outline her plan to make the biggest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II during her first 100 days in office.
On Tuesday, Clinton will tour the Borinquen Health Care Center, at 3601 Federal Highway in Miami, to raise awareness about the public health threat of Zika virus.
With about three months to go to the election, the Clinton campaign plans to focus their attention on the battleground states that have decided the most recent presidential elections.
Those states are the perennial top-tier targets: Florida and Ohio, plus Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. President Barack Obama carried them all in 2008, and missed out on only North Carolina during his 2012 re-election campaign.
"The last two elections have given Democrats an electoral path for victory," said Clinton campaign adviser John Anzalone. "And our strategy is to efficiently use our resources to lock down the support we need to reach 270 electoral votes."
After a bump in support for Clinton in national polls that followed the Democratic convention and tracked Trump's recent gaffes, the number of states where Clinton will invest her time and money may get smaller than those eleven.
When the Clinton campaign booked more than $23 million in new television ad time late this past week to start on Monday, it spent most of the money in just three states: Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Feeling good about Colorado and Virginia, the campaign passed on giving those states a fresh injection of ad dollars, though they remain heavily staffed with organizers.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump also plans to bring his campaign to Florida this week. Florida Republican consultant Brett Doster said simply of the state "If we don't win here, I just don't see how we win."
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said Trump's problems in Florida go deeper than his lack of advertising and overwhelmingly unpopular standing among Latinos. He said Trump's recent criticism of the Muslim family of a fallen U.S. soldier is not likely to sit well in a state with 22 military installations and more than 1.5 million veterans.
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