Chelsea Clinton in Tempe:
Clinton pushes nominee’s free-tuition plan at ASU
The Democratic nominee’s daughter visited ASU Wednesday.
Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, spoke Wednesday to students and visitors during a rally on Arizona State University’s Tempe campus.
The ballroom inside ASU’s Memorial Union hit its capacity of about 750 by 1 p.m., helping create one of the more intimate and tame atmospheres among election rallies in Arizona this year.
Clinton, 36, spoke briefly on a handful of points and answered questions from the audience, touching on:
Hillary Clinton’s New College Compact, which would give low- and middle-income students free tuition at in-state public universities, as well as other benefits.
The need for automatic voter registration at 18 years old, or when a person becomes a U.S. citizen.
The importance of voting, recalling that President Barack Obama won swing-state North Carolina in 2008 by about 14,000 votes, which “is one to two votes per precinct.”
“I never thought I would see in my lifetime the almost daily diet of hate speech coming out of Donald Trump ... that too often goes unanswered and un-repudiated by the Republicans,” Chelsea Clinton said. “The racism, the sexism, the Islamophobia, the homophobia, the jingoism, the demeaning rhetoric against Americans with disabilities, the disrespect for our veterans, the disrespect for a Gold Star family.”
Clinton said Republican nominee Donald Trump’s idea to have Americans listed by religion and to end birthright citizenship were “un-American.”
“When we look at Donald Trump, who I truly believe when he says ‘Make America Great Again,’ he means make America great again for white, wealthy, straight men,” Clinton said to loud applause.
“We have to stand against that while also affirmatively including the whole swaths of our country that he has disrespected, demeaned, not included in his view of our future.”
Likely the most famous face in the crowd was U.S. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, Democratic challenger to U.S. Sen. John McCain in this year’s Senate race. Kirkpatrick introduced Clinton to the crowd.
“I have flipped two congressional districts from red to blue, and this time we’re gonna flip the entire state from red to blue,” Kirkpatrick said.
“Together we can make history in November. We can elect the first woman president of the United States, and we can make history in Arizona and elect the first woman senator,” she said to a roar of applause.
A new Arizona Republic /Morrison/Cronkite News poll released Wednesday showed Clinton is hanging on to a small but widening lead over Donald Trump — 39 percent of the likely Arizona voters surveyed supported her, while 33.9 percent supported Trump. Another 20.7 percent hadn’t decided yet.
Many students talked before and after the event about how higher-education funding was their top priority, including Johnathan Allen, a former ASU student who had been working on a master’s degree in justice studies.
He had big dreams to work on establishing a new union of African states, similar to the European Union, and to help eliminate corruption and undo the effects of colonialism. A year and $20,000 in loans into his studies, he decided to put his plans on hold.
“I realized student loan debt can be a dangerous rabbit hole to fall into. I’m not trying to go into further debt,” he said. “Seeing free education in other countries and seeing it could be a potential here, I figured I could take some time off.”
He still hopes to finish graduate school — under Clinton’s plan, people with student loans would “never have to pay back more than 10 percent of their income, and all remaining college debt will be forgiven after 20 years,” according to her website.
The Clinton campaign reached out to ASU Young Democrats late last week to set up the event, according to club President Austin Marshall. The student group worked with the Arizona Democratic Party to plan the rally.
After the event, 18-year-old Maricopa Community Colleges student Yudidt Nonthe noted how tame and casual the event was — Chelsea Clinton wore a gray T-shirt bearing Hillary Clinton’s logo – compared with larger Hillary and Bill Clinton rallies she attended earlier this year.
“I feel like it was total conversation between everyone. The room was super friendly … She was super genuine and kind,” Nonthe said before she posted a selfie with Chelsea Clinton.
“Her daughter made me feel way better about my decision,” she said. “I’ve been attacked by many Republicans, so I doubt myself sometimes … but I definitely think that coming here straight up made me 100 percent like, ‘I’m in this and I’m never going back.’ ”