Can Ivanka Trump Help Her Father Win The Support Of White, Suburban Women Voters?

U.S. President Donald Trump – trailing his opponent Joe Biden in many polls – has instructed his daughter, Ivanka, to help him secure the support of college-educated suburban white women.

Biden currently leads Trump by some 20% among this crucial segment of voters, Politico reported.

Ivanka, 38, has her work cut out for her. She has already visited 10 battleground states -- Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. The businesswoman, who is married to Jared Kushner, another senior Trump adviser, is expected to also campaign in Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina ahead of the election.

A Trump aide told Politico that Ivanka has appeared in about six “virtual rallies” and is expected to have raised about $35 million for her father at nine fundraisers since August.

“As a working mother who has dedicated her career to the improvement of women’s lives, Ivanka intrinsically understands the issues facing American families today,” said Mercedes Schlapp, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign.

During a recent rally in Pennsylvania, President Trump urged “suburban housewives” to support him, claiming that street protests in large cities would overspill violence into their communities and hurt their property values while endangering their safety.

“Can I ask you to do me a favor, suburban women?” he said. “Will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”

However, while a good chunk of white women supported Trump in 2016, he may have trouble convincing them to vote for him now.

“The reality is that women voters are looking at the substance of what’s happened,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It's kind of late ... to try suddenly to be having a different tone and tenor. I don’t think [Ivanka] alone can make up for what these women have been seeing [from Donald] the last four years.”

The Associated Press reported on a woman named Lori Goldman in affluent, suburban Oakland County, Mich., who is seeking to defeat Trump.

“We take nothing for granted,” she said. “They say Joe Biden is ahead. Nope. We work like Biden is behind 20 points in every state.”

Trump won Michigan in 2016 by almost 10,700 votes.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) told Politico that suburban women voters are “paying very close attention to what the president is saying and doing, not just recently, but over four years. No surrogate [like Ivanka] can undo that. They know exactly what he has done and not done.”

Not surprisingly, the Biden team also rejected Trump’s overtures to suburban white women voters.

“Trump has done nothing to earn the respect -- much less the votes -- of women over the past four years, and his last-ditch attempt at pathetic pleading to win them back won't erase his record,” said Biden campaign spokesperson Rosemary Boeglin.

Ivanka, who had no political experience prior to 2016, was a fairly high-profile figure in her father’s first campaign that year. Trump even considered making her his running mate at one time.

“She [Ivanka] is a working mother. She understands these issues because she herself lives them,” said Amy Kremer, cofounder and chairman of Women for America First, a conservative organization. “People want to converse with her, hear what she has to say.”