According to a report by The Associated Press on Monday, Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin is set to announce his endorsement of former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
The AP reported that Woodfin will officially announce his endorsement on Monday. The announcement comes weeks after Biden met with Woodfin and other black southern mayors in Atlanta
In an interview with the AP, the first-term mayor of Alabama’s largest city said that he left that Atlanta meeting believing that Biden is the Democrats’ best bet to defeat President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election.
“I think [Biden] would view mayors as his partners in the campaign and he would view us as partners in the White House,” Woodfin advised. “That’s important to me.”
In the interview, Woodfin highlighted Biden’s work on infrastructure during the Obama administration and his continued support for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) as major reasons for the endorsement.
However, the mayor also pointed to next year’s U.S. Senate race in Alabama, in which endangered freshman Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) will try to fight off his eventual Republican challenger in a state in which Trump beat Hillary Clinton by nearly 28 percentage points. Jones endorsed Biden early in the 2020 cycle.
Woodfin also outlined that state legislative races across the country could be boosted by Biden being the Democrats’ 2020 nominee, which is especially important due to redistricting battles.
“You need somebody at the top of the ticket who can help down ballot candidates and expand the map nationwide,” Woodfin remarked. “From all the evidence I’ve seen, Vice President Biden gives us the best chance to do that.”
While framing his endorsement as being of a relatively moderate candidate who could “expand the map nationwide,” Woodfin was actually elected in 2017 partly with the help of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Sanders-aligned grassroots organizations.
In a robocall that went out the night before Election Day in that 2017 race, Sanders stressed that Woodfin would fight for “Medicare for All.” This comes in stark contrast to Woodfin now backing Biden’s support of keeping the Affordable Care Act, as a core issue in the 2020 Democratic primary has been whether to scrap Obamacare for something like Medicare for All or not.
Woodfin ran Clinton’s 2016 campaign in Alabama.
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Sean Ross is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
