By Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Joe Biden will ramp up spending this month as part of a new advertising push aimed partly at convincing Latino men that abortion rights are a vital issue that affects them, the U.S. president's 2024 campaign said on Friday.
A television, radio and digital advertisement airing in both English and Spanish in competitive "battleground" states features Cesar Carreon, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who now works as a Las Vegas carpenter, mentioning his daughters and attacking Trump as "not tough" for taking away women's "freedom."
The campaign will spend more than $1 million in Hispanic media for May alone with more to come in the months ahead, it said. The plans for the ad campaign were not previously reported.
Biden's campaign seeks to press an early financial advantage over Republican Donald Trump to shore up flagging support among the president's key voting blocs, including the Latino community that favored the Democrat by more than 30 points in 2020.
As with other Americans, Latino voters tell pollsters they are especially concerned about the U.S. economy, which has delivered rising prices along with steady growth in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In previous elections, Democrats have often worked to appeal to Latino voters on economic issues. Latinos are twice as likely as Americans overall to identify as Catholic, according to Pew Research Center, and some hold more socially conservative views than other Democratic voters.
"The Hispanic vote will be decisive in November," said Jaime Florez, the Republican National Committee's director of Hispanic communications, adding that the party was appealing to Latino voters citing its values of "family, freedom, patriotism, economic model, faith and a good education of our children."
Biden's team points to data showing concern among Latino voters and others about a range of issues, including what his campaign terms "reproductive freedom."
Latinos make up nearly a third of the populations of Arizona and Nevada, two especially competitive states in the 2024 presidential election.
Arizona's Senate on Wednesday voted to repeal an 1864 ban on abortion that would otherwise have taken effect within weeks. The vote came in the aftermath of a ruling of a U.S. Supreme Court - stacked by Trump with conservative justices - that ended the constitutional right to abortion.
In Florida, a heavily Latino state Biden hopes to make more competitive this year, a six-week abortion ban just took effect. Nearly 6.5 million Latinas live in 26 states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion, according to Biden campaign data.
"When it comes to the ongoing assault on women's reproductive freedom by MAGA Republicans, the stakes for Latinos, and especially Latinas, couldn't be more clear," said Senator Alex Padilla, an adviser to Biden's campaign.
Democrats have promised to create a national right to abortion under a second Biden term despite failing to do so when they controlled Congress by slim margins from 2021-2023.
They have warned that Trump could sign a national ban on the practice, though the ex-president has not endorsed such a bill and has said abortion should be left to states to decide.
The Biden campaign has seized on comments Trump made in a recent Time Magazine interview suggesting he would allow some states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate local abortion bans.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Deepa Babington)
