Biden staffs up and launches new ads in Texas

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Biden deputy campaign manager says Trump team efforts to redefine former VP as puppet for the left have failed

The American people know and trust Joe Biden, says Kate Bedingfield, Biden deputy campaign manager and communications director.

Former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign is beefing up its presence in Texas, a longtime ruby red state that recent polls suggest is up for grabs between the Democratic challenger and President Trump in November’s general election.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee's campaign on Monday announced six staff hires in the Lone Star State. Topping the list is Rebecca Acuna, a longtime Democratic strategist in Texas who was named the campaign's state director.

The unveiling of the hires come as the Biden campaign also launched new digital ads in English and Spanish in Texas, commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Walmart shooting in El Paso that left 23 people dead. It was the worst mass shooting targeting Latinos in recent U.S. history.

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The ads use clips of Biden from a speech he gave four days after the El Paso shooting in which the former vice president accused Trump of "fanning the flames of white supremacy."

"How far is it from Trump saying this is an invasion to the shooter in El Paso declaring this attack as a response to Hispanic invasion of Texas?" Biden says in the digital spots.

Biden is trying to become the first Democrat to win Texas in more than four decades. Jimmy Carter in 1976 was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the Lone Star State.

But an average of the latest public opinion polls in the state compiled by Real Clear Politics indicates the race between Biden and Trump is basically tied, with the president holding a statistically insignificant two-tenths of one percent edge.

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Thirty-eight electoral votes are up for grabs in Texas, the second-largest prize on Election Day following California, where 55 electoral votes are at stake.

Trump won the longtime red state by nine points in the 2016 election, down from Republican nominee Mitt Romney's 16-point win over then-President Barack Obama in Texas in 2012.

Biden went up on the air in Texas for the first time with commercials three weeks ago, in a modest ad buy. The Biden campaign didn't disclose the amount of money behind the new digital ad buy.

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Stressing that Texas will remain red, Trump reelection campaign manager Bill Stepien told political reporters two weeks ago, "I would invite the Biden campaign to play in Texas. They should play hard. They should go after Texas really, really heavily, spend a lot of money in the Houston and Dallas media markets."

And discussing Texas as well as Arizona and Georgia – two other longtime Republican states in presidential elections that the latest polling suggests are now toss-ups, he said, "These are all states that come back home. We had the same conversations four years ago and we saw they all turned out on election night in November."

The Trump campaign didn’t share how many boots on the ground they currently have in Texas but told Fox News that they’ve held over 560 training sessions with over 4,500 attendees and made nearly 3 million voters contacts so far this cycle in the state.