Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Clinton, Trump crisscross state
COCONUT CREEK — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both focused their campaigns Tuesday on Florida, one of the closest battlegrounds in the country.
Appearing at a Broward College campus on the second day of in-person early voting, Clinton’s 27-minute speech was standard political fare. She praised local Democratic politicians, extensively promoted U.S. Senate candidate Patrick Murphy, then turned to Trump, whom she alternately chastised and mocked.
In a voice that sounded more gravelly than usual, Clinton also pushed the laundry lists of policies that she’s known for, such as universal pre-kindergarten education, affordable college and clean energy jobs.
“This is a crossroads election that’s going to determine so much what kind of country we have in the dec-
ades ahead. I want to wake up in the White House with your help,” she told a crowd of 1,750.
Trump’s approach was far different at his first event of the day, an appearance at his golf resort in Doral.
His topic was supposed to be Obamacare and an Obama administration report showing that premiums for mid-level health plans under the program in most states would rise by an average of 25 percent next year, before subsidies kick in. “Obamacare is just blowing up,” Trump said, briefly sticking to the topic.
Then he went off on many tangents, including:
His golf resort, which he touted as “one of the great places on earth” where “bookings are through the roof.”
His newest construction project, the Old Post Office Pavilion renovation in Washington, D.C. “I always said I’m getting to Pennsylvania Ave. one way or the other.”
His Florida employees, “80 percent of them are Hispanic.” Cooks, housekeepers and other employees were at the event on the lush grounds. “We love you!,” shouted one voice from the dozens gathered.
“I love you too!,” Trump responded. One man, who did not initially give his name, stepped up. “Better say good, or I’ll say you’re fired,” Trump joked.
His suggestion that many of his workers are having “tremendous problems with Obamacare” while highlighting a report that predicted premium increases of roughly 25 percent for the coming year.
Almost immediately, the resort’s general manager approached reporters to correct that remark, stating that the vast majority of the club’s employees had employer-based health plans and were not dependent on Obamacare for coverage. Trump conceded that point afterward as well.
Trump, finishing three days of campaigning in the state, had rallies later in the day in Sanford, the city where the black teenager Trayvon Martin was killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in 2012, and in Tallahassee.
Clinton was headed for a fundraiser in Pinecrest in Miami-Dade County. On Wednesday, she has rallies in Lake Worth and Tampa.
Clinton’s objective is to build enthusiasm for voting — and to make sure her supporters don’t get complacent in the light of polling that shows her ahead of Trump. She warned the crowd against taking anything for granted.
“It’s going to be a close election. Pay no attention to the polls. Don’t get complacent. We’ve got to turn people out. I’m asking you to vote for me. I’m asking you to send Patrick Murphy to the Senate. I’m asking you to most importantly vote for yourselves.”
“I feel good but I am not taking anything for granted,” Clinton said.
Trump’s objective is to convince his supporters the race can still be won, despite the constant stream of polls showing Clinton ahead. Without Florida’s 29 electoral votes — 270 are needed to win the presidency — Trump has no hope. Clinton’s lead over Trump in Florida is smaller than her advantage in national polls. Nationally, the RealClearPolitics polling average has Clinton ahead of Trump by 5.4 percentage points. In Florida, her lead is 3.1 points.
Floridians have been voting by mail for weeks and early voting started Monday in most counties, including Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade. That was the focus of Democrats, who erected a giant “vote early” sign behind Clinton as she spoke — with the letter “O” a giant orange.
The candidate herself provided the dates and hours for early voting in South Florida — and suggested that when the rally was over the crowd should “go across the street to the north regional library and cast your ballot today.”
The crowd was enthusiastic, sometimes boisterous. As Clinton recalled the final presidential debate, the crowd started singing “Happy Birthday;” she turns 69 on Wednesday. She joked that “that last debate was like an early birthday president.”
Standing next to Trump for four and a half hours of debates proved, as she’s said before, “that I have the stamina to be president.”
Clinton sought to lacerate Trump with is own words and statements, condemning him for constantly throwing out insults and refusing to say he would respect the outcome of the election. As if on cue, the crowd dutifully booed.
“I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised. This is the same guy who said the thought the Emmys” were rigged when his reality TV show didn’t get the recognition he thought it deserved, Clinton said.
She said she doubted that Trump knows the meaning of the presidential oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. She said religious tests at the borders are wrong, a criticism of Trump’s proposed Muslim ban. She said threats to punish journalists and restrict the First Amendment aren’t proper. “And we don’t incite violence and turn people against each other,” she said.
“Donald Trump is attacking everything that has set our country apart for 240 years,” she said, explaining that the country’s democracy was set on its course by the first president, George Washington, deciding not to become a king and leaving office after eight years. “Donald Trump probably would have called him a loser.”
And she criticized the nearly $1 billion loss on one tax year that could have allowed him to avoid paying federal income tax for nearly 20 years. “I’ve been pondering this,” she said. “How does anyone lose a billion dollars in a year, especially when you’re running casinos?”
Also on Tuesday, Trump visited the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami and praised veterans of the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs operation which tried to topple Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
Trump said he was “in a room full of heroes.” He said the veterans were “fighting for values that unite us all” during the 1961 invasion.
He sharply criticized President Barack Obama’s move to restore some diplomatic ties with Cuba, though he has yet to spell out his own plan for relations with the island nation.
In Coconut Creek, Murphy introduced Clinton as “the most qualified person we have ever had to lead this country.”
Murphy used his support for Clinton’s positions — on subjects such as equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage and reducing student loan debt — as ways to both bash Trump and to separate himself from the man he’s challenging, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
“We are not going to strengthen our economy with Donald Trump’s racist bullying ... and Donald Trump’s misogynistic attacks, ” Murphy said. “When Donald Trump goes low, Marco Rubio is right there with him.”
Murphy criticized Rubio’s refusal to drop his endorsement of Trump, even after recordings surfaced featuring Trump’s 2005 comments about groping women.
“Donald Trump boasts about sexual assault and Marco Rubio looks the other way,” Murphy said.
As she came on stage, Clinton clasped and held aloft Murphy’s hand and talked about his race against Rubio for about five minutes before turning to her own.
Three other Democratic members of Congress delivered introductions.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, co-opted Trump’s debate crack about Clinton being a nasty woman.
“Where are all the nasty women in the house?” Wasserman Schultz asked. The crowd cheered.
She asked “all you nasty women” to take their “women cards” and get to the polls.
U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-West Delray, said he knows some “nasty men” who also need to vote.
He also mocked Rubio for saying he’s uncertain about the effects of human activity on climate change.
“Where’s Marco Rubio on climate change?” Hastings asked. When the crowd booed, Hastings quoted Obama: “Don’t boo. Vote.”
U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-West Delray, said Trump’s behavior toward women who have accused him of sexual improprieties and his attacks on Clinton are “like a nightmarish introduction to gender studies.”
He said Broward is the “most important” county in the nation in the presidential election.
In an interview, Wasserman Schultz said Democrats were heartened by the number of mail and in-person early votes cast so far.
Republicans have traditionally done better than Democrats with mail voting, a gap that has narrowed this year. By the end of the second day of early voting in most counties on Tuesday, Wasserman Schultz predicted more Democrats than Republicans will have voted in the presidential election.
She, too, cautioned against complacency. “We always, in particular two weeks out from Election Day, [work] like we’re 10-points behind.”
She also said Trump “is not going to become president because there is no way this country is going to elect a misogynist who is as intemperate and bigoted and unqualified.”
After such a negative campaign, Anna Koldys of Southwest Ranches said she has been worried about what happens to the country in the wake of the voting.
“We have to find a way to rise above it all and pull together once the election is over,” said Koldys, 51. “It concerns me that there’s more divisiveness than there seems to have been in my voting lifetime.”
Koldys said she fainted while waiting in the long line to get into Clinton’s rally. After a drink of water and finding a place inside to sit, Koldys said she liked the positive messages she heard.
Broward College student Stephan Celestin said he already cast his vote by mail for Clinton. He said he came to Tuesday’s rally to see her in person and take a few pictures.
While Celestin said he didn’t like the insults aimed at Trump during the rally, he did like Clinton’s stance on increasing the minimum wage and reigning in college costs.
“Donald Trump has bad character. As a president, you have to have some respect,” Celestin said.
Pam Tisdale, of Pompano Beach, said Clinton’s positions on the environment and equal pay for women make her a better choice than Donald Trump.
“Hillary comes with some baggage, but nothing like Trump,” said Tisdale, 65. “It’s the choice of competence versus incompetence.”
Trump supporter Janusz Biskupek, of Boca Raton, quietly stood in the back of the rally on Tuesday wearing a shirt that read, “Donald you are the future.” A security guard stood nearby. “I wanted to hear the positions of Hillary Clinton,” said Biskupek, an immigrant from Poland. “I didn’t hear a lot of new policies.”
Dietra Fischer, a former Fort Lauderdale nightclub owner who retired to Okeechobee, said she voted for Clinton on Monday, then came to the rally Tuesday for “a dose of blue.”
“I’ve been waiting for a woman president my whole life,” she said. “I was grinning ear to ear as soon as I made that vote.”
“We [Democrats] always, in particular two weeks out from Election Day, [work] like we’re 10-points behind.” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston