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President Joe Biden is planning to visit Auburn on Friday to sell his economic policies and tout domestic manufacturing gains made during his administration.
While the event is being organized by the White House and not by the Democrat’s 2024 campaign, there are political reasons for Biden to visit Auburn. The closely divided city is in one of the two key population centers in Maine’s swing 2nd Congressional District, which was won twice by former President Donald Trump.
The White House has not announced the location of Biden’s visit, but two sources familiar with the president’s plans said he was coming to Auburn. They requested anonymity to speak candidly about details of a trip that had not yet been officially announced. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request to confirm those details.
Details of Biden’s visit are not yet clear. Plans for presidential visits come with massive logistical hurdles, from arranging transportation from major airports to event locations to security along motorcade routes. On a Trump visit to Maine in 2020, he flew on Air Force One into Bangor for one event and then was flown by helicopter to another stop in Guilford.
Biden’s White House announced the Maine trip over the weekend in a pool alert to reporters. On Sunday, it said the president will “discuss how Bidenomics is driving a manufacturing boom and helping workers and innovators invent and make more in America.”
The president is struggling politically en route to a possible 2024 rematch with Trump, a Republican facing federal charges related to his handling of classified documents, plus other charges in New York and investigations into his efforts to overturn Biden’s election victory in 2020. Trump remains the front-runner in a crowded Republican primary.
Biden’s approval rating sits in the low 40s nationally. A University of New Hampshire poll this spring found 53 percent of Mainers disapproved of his tenure despite him beating Trump by 9 percentage points statewide in the 2020 election. The 2nd District still went for Trump by more than 7 points, giving him his second consecutive win there.
It will be Biden’s first trip to Maine since a 2018 book tour brought him to Portland, but the Auburn area has hosted notable presidential visits in the past.
John F. Kennedy closed his 1960 campaign in a downtown Lewiston park now named for him, while Lyndon B. Johnson gave a speech in the same park on a 1966 visit remembered now for a photo of him eating an ice cream cone at a Dairy Queen in Topsham.
Maine typically gets little notice in presidential politics. However, Trump focused heavily on it during his two campaigns, visiting five times from the 2016 primary through the general election and coming twice in 2020, including a last-minute October stop at a Levant orchard.
