FLORENCE, South Carolina — Joe Biden mistakenly referred to his primary competitor Julián Castro by another name of Spanish origin while discussing his campaign’s Latino and Hispanic outreach efforts.
“So, even though that I’m the only campaign that I’m aware of — maybe, maybe Cisneros’s campaign is doing it, I’m not sure — but, um, or Castro’s campaign is doing it,” Biden said at a campaign event in Florence, South Carolina on Saturday. “The, um, fact is that we have reached out extensively into the African — excuse me, into the Hispanic community and the Latino community over my entire career.”
Castro, who gets under 1% support in most recent Democratic primary polls, is the only Latino candidate running for president who hopes to capture Hispanic and Latino voters. He was secretary of housing and urban development during the Obama administration, and Biden, then vice president, swore in Castro.
Biden, 76, has flubbed people’s names before. Since May, he has twice referred to former British Prime Minister Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher.
No one named Cisneros is in the presidential race, though there are a few with that name in national politics. Gil Cisneros is a freshman Democratic congressman from California. Henry Cisneros was Bill Clinton’s housing secretary in his first term. A left-wing Democratic primary challenger to Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar is Jessica Cisneros.
Castro, 45, criticized Biden during a September Democratic presidential primary debate stage for selectively using former President Barack Obama’s legacy to his benefit.
“Every time something good about Barack Obama comes up, he says, ‘Oh, I was there, I was there, I was there, that’s me, too,’ and then every time somebody questions part of the administration that we were both part of, he says, ‘Well, that was the president.’ I mean, he wants to take credit for Obama’s work, but not have to answer to any questions,” Castro said during the debate.
Biden brought up Castro on Saturday when asked about Republicans commandeering a URL referencing the Biden campaign’s “Todos Con Biden” (“All for Biden” in Spanish) Hispanic and Latino outreach initiative.
“They’re really wonderful people, the Trump campaign,” Biden sarcastically said of the website.
“We couldn’t buy every single site out there,” Biden said, noting the high cost of buying every URL associated with his initiative. “What happened was there are websites that you can buy, so they went out and bought anything that had to do with Joe Biden.”
