The Biden campaign is launching a nationwide effort to win the women’s vote, Jill Biden will lead it

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ‘s campaign on Wednesday announced it is launching “Women for Biden-Harris,” a new nationwide program to organize and mobilize female voters to give him and Vice President Kamala Harris a second White House term. Biden’s wife, Jill, will lead the effort.

Women were a crucial part of the coalition that elected Biden in 2020 and his campaign aims to recapture that with the reinvigorated effort.

The first lady was to kick things off on Friday, the start of Women’s History Month, with a weekend travel blitz through states that will be key to deciding November’s presidential election.

“Women put Joe in the White House four years ago, and women will do it again,” she said in a statement. “In our communities, women are the organizers, the planners, the mobilizers. We get things done. That’s exactly why we’re launching ‘Women for Biden’ now because when women organize, we win.”

The first lady’s Friday to Sunday weekend tour will take her to Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, all among the handful of states that will decide whether Democrat Biden gets another four years in office or whether the Republican Party retakes control of the White House.

Former President Donald Trump is running far ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the race to become the Republican presidential nominee and Biden’s challenger.

Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said the stakes for women in this election “could not be higher.” Women were crucial to Biden’s defeat of Trump in 2020.

“Americans will face a real choice at the ballot box this November between Joe and Kamala who will stand up and fight for women and their freedoms each and every day, and Donald Trump who is looking to take our rights and freedoms away,” Rodriguez said in a statement. “Republicans have underestimated the power of women time after time and together, this November, we will make sure that they never make that mistake again.”

Biden’s campaign and Democrats writ large want to make reproductive rights and access to women’s health care a central issue this year, inspired by wins in elections in 2022 held after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to an abortion.

Trump takes credit for the high court decision because he nominated three justices who tipped the ideological balance of the bench to the right.

Separately, the Alabama Supreme Court this month stunned with a ruling that declared embryos produced through in vitro fertilization are children, opening anyone who destroys them to potential criminal prosecution. Clinics in the state shut down in response, denying women access to care.

Women were a crucial part of the coalition that elected Biden in 2020, giving him 55% of their vote, according to AP VoteCast, Black women and suburban women were pillars of Biden’s coalition while Trump had a modest advantage among white women and a much wider share of white women without college degrees, according to the AP survey of more than 110,000 voters in that year’s election.

Women for Biden-Harris will mobilize female volunteers across the country through organizing calls, with top campaign surrogates as well as digital and targeted ad buys, the campaign said. It was one of the largest coalitions for the campaign in 2020, the campaign said.

Darlene Superville, The Associated Press