Joe Biden launches new vote ads for Puerto Ricans

Joe Biden‘s campaign is launching a new get-out-the-vote effort aimed at Puerto Ricans in Florida and Pennsylvania, as well as people living on the island who can’t vote in the presidential contest but who might encourage their friends and relatives stateside.

And that’s what the ad features: people in Puerto Rico urging stateside Borinqueños with the message “Hazlo,” or “do it.”

The effort is being with print ads and a video ad that will run digitally on the island and in the two states.

The 60-second video “Usa Tu Vota” (“Use Your Vote”) starts with upbeat music and beautiful vistas of the island, and then turns to island residents encouraging others to vote, and to vote for Joe Biden. They plead, “for me.” The ad serves as a reminder that while Puerto Ricans on the island have a lot at stake in the 2020 presidential election, they do not have votes. A song’s lyrics implores, “Usa tu voto por nosotras para hablar,” or “Use your vote to speak for us.”

The print ads have a similar message that reads, “With Your Vote You Help Us Here.”

The battle for the Puerto Rican vote, particularly in Florida, has been intense. President Donald Trump made frequent references to Puerto Rico in his speech in Sanford Monday night, saying nobody has done more for the island than him.

That’s a point that the Biden campaign seeks to strongly dispute, and which Biden took on in his speech last month in Kissimmee, the heart of Florida’s Puerto Rican diaspora. The Biden campaign offered reminders of the island’s long, slow struggle to overcome the devastation of Hurricane Maria, which cost more than 3,000 lives, left much of the territory without power for more than half a year, and still struggles to recover as federal assistance has been slow and less than promised.

Biden and his campaign also have been sending reminders of reports that Trump had offered to trade Puerto Rico to Denmark in exchange for Greenland, and that he had denied that the hurricane death toll was anywhere close to 3,000.