President Joe Biden spends afternoon in Palm Beach County

JUPITER, Fla. (CBS12) — President Joe Biden spent part of his afternoon in Palm Beach County on Tuesday.

The president was here Tuesday to raise money in Florida, a one-time swing state that has since become a Republican stronghold and the home turf of Republican front-runner Donald Trump.

He arrived at the Palm Beach International Airport (PBI) at around 1 p.m. Video shows Biden walking down the stairs and being greeted by Palm Beach County Mayor Maria Sachs and West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James.

His arrival caused several traffic delays throughout the county as he traveled to a 2 p.m. campaign fundraiser that took place in Jupiter, which is about a half-hour north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

He left Palm Beach County close to 4 p.m. after being escorted by a motorcade. He is expected to appear at another fundraising event in Miami.

Biden has been buoyed by positive economic news as fears of a recession have faded. Now he’s eager to stockpile campaign cash to help him promote his record and target Trump in what is expected to be a grueling and expensive election year.

In addition, Republicans routed Democrats in Florida in the 2022 midterm elections, when they won campaigns for governor, U.S. Senate and other statewide positions by about 20 percentage points across the board. Voter registration, which favored Democrats by 600,000 a little more than a decade ago, now shows Republicans with an 800,000-voter margin.

Florida’s rightward lean reflects the arrival of retirees from the Midwest and Northeast who generally favor Republicans, but also the political preferences of the state’s Latino population, which makes up 18% of its electorate.

AP Vote Cast found that Biden won just 54% of the state’s Latino voters in 2020, down substantially from his national average of 63%. He performed especially poorly among people of Cuban descent, who made up 5% of Florida’s voters.

One fundraiser is scheduled to take place in Jupiter, about a half hour north of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and the other in Miami. (WPEC)

These lower margins among Latinos also resulted in Biden performing worse in some of the state’s most populous and wealthiest counties compared to previous Democratic nominees. For example, Biden won Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties in 2020, but by lower margins than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

Inflation is also much more of a challenge in Florida, where residents tend to drive more and the economy depends on tourism. Although consumer sentiment has improved and inflation has eased, higher prices have been a persistent weight on Biden’s approval numbers. The consumer price index for the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach area jumped 5.7% in December from a year ago, compared to 3.4% nationally, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Kevin Wagner, a Florida Atlantic University political science professor who runs the Palm Beach County school’s polling operation, said Biden has a chance in Florida given the high number of independents, who make up about a quarter of the electorate.

Wagner also said the inability of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s former rival for the GOP nomination, and the Legislature to rein in the state’s skyrocketing housing prices and insurance rates could cost the party votes.

“The issues people are focused on are going to be different, the candidates are going to be different” than 2022, he said. “The assumption that Florida will necessarily be an easy victory for Republicans is questionable.”

Both Florida parties have been hit by infighting. The Republicans recently ousted their state party chair, Christian Ziegler, after he got caught up in a sex scandal.

Palm Beach County Commission rejects Ag Reserve land swap

GL Homes was looking to build about 1,000 luxury homes, more than 270 affordable housing units

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — After more than an 11-hour meeting, Palm Beach County commissioners on Tuesday night voted 4-3 to deny the controversial GL Homes land swap development to build homes west of Boca Raton.

Denying the project were Mayor Gregg Weiss, Vice Mayor Maria Sachs and Commissioners Mack Bernard, Marci Woodward. Sachs’ district includes west of Boca Raton.

Approving the swap were Commissioners Sara Baxter, Maria Marino and Michael Barnett.

Baxter, who serves the Loxahatchee/Acreage area, has hosted town halls about the land swap and hopes to build a racetrack on 128 acres along a 20-mile bend in Loxahatchee. Also, an ATV park proposed north of 60th Street, west of Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, is on the land that was involved in the swap. The ATV park originally was proposed on the Loxahatchee land.

In May, the proposal received first approval by a 5-2 vote with Weiss and Bernard switching their stance Tuesday.

The plan was to swap land that GL Homes owns near the Acreage and exchange it for a smaller plot of land located south within the Agricultural Reserve along U.S. Highway 441 west of Boca Raton.

GL Homes was looking to build about 1,000 luxury homes and more than 270 affordable housing units. The plan also calls for GL Homes to install a water resource project on the northern property.

The meeting started at 9:30 a.m. in a full commission room that forced county officials to set up two overflow rooms with televisions on two other floors in the county office building. The vote came after 8:30 p.m.

“We believe we’ve been a good, trustworthy, reliable partner in Palm Beach County,” GL Homes president Misha Ezratti told the board. “It’s become more critical than ever with issues like water quality, workforce housing, parks and civic needs affecting Palm Beach County like never before.”

“The proposal before you today represents a unique opportunity to start down a path or address these voids,” Ezratti said.

After the vote, Ezratti declined to comment.

“If we did this today, that means that full 8,000 acres would be wiped away because the next developer would come, the next person would come and then we would just blow up the Ag Reserve,” Benard said. “This was historic but, as you know, this was a controversial decision. It was 4-3, but I believe that’s the right decision for Palm Beach County and the residents of Palm Beach County.”

Opponents of the project wore green shirts and joined another group of GL Homes supporters wearing blue shirts.

“There’s too much traffic here. We don’t want to become another Broward County,” one man wearing a green shirt said while exiting the hearing room during a lunch break.

People who voiced concerns over infrastructure and traffic in the area noted residents voted in 1999 to maintain the area as an agricultural preserve.

Some commissioners who opposed the land swap argued that provided workforce housing and even water projects shouldn’t fall into the hands of a private company.

One speaker said the development is inevitable.

“I think anybody who believes long term we’re not going to develop land and bring people to Florida is just short-sided,” Bart Price, who was wearing a blue shirt, said. “Eventually, it’s going to happen.”

Commissioners spent hours grilling GL Homes executives and experts on the housing project, roads, schools and even the water project.

The public hearing, which reportedly had scores of request cards, began just after 4 p.m. and lasted several hours.