Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton will make stops in West Virginia next week.
Clinton will kick off her ‘Breaking Down Barriers’ tour in Appalachia Monday with stops in Williamson and Ashland, Kentucky, will the former President will focus on Charleston and Logan Sunday.
The former Secretary will reportedly make a second stop in West Virginia Tuesday, but details about that event have not been released.
According to a press release from the campaign, the events will focus on jobs and the economy.
“I want you to keep imagining a tomorrow where instead of building walls, we are breaking down barriers,” Clinton said Tuesday, according to the release.
“We are making it more likely that Americans will be part of a prosperous, inclusive, decent society.”
The stops come less than a week after Democratic rival Bernie Sanders held a campaign rally in Huntington that drew more than 6,000 supporters.
An estimated 6,000 Bernie Sanders supporters attended the Tuesday rally in Huntington, standing in line for hours to see the Democratic candidate for president.
The results Tuesday evening, however, showed Sanders lagging even further behind former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, winning only one of five state primary elections, but neither Sanders nor his supporters are ready to back out of the race just yet.
Still, Clinton’s nomination appears to be more and more inevitable as voters across the country continue to cast ballots. So, should their candidate lose the race, how will West Virginia’s Sanders supporters vote in November?
We asked a few Sanders supporters.
“I’ll die before I vote Republican,” 28-year-old Dustin Cheney of Charleston said as he waited with a group of friends outside the Big Sandy Arena. He would take Clinton over any Republican nominee.
“I can’t get behind a party that can’t get behind themselves. They act like babies.”
Virginia Dobreff traveled nearly three hours with her 20-year-old son to attend the rally and shared a similar sentiment. A registered Republican, Dobreff said the field of candidates in her party is lacking, pushing her to vote for Sanders.
“I don’t agree with everything he says, but we can’t all be the same,” she said. “I think that he is someone I could look up to as a leader because he truly seems to respect people.”
Credit John Minchillo / AP Photo
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Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at his rally in Huntington Tuesday.
That respect is not something you find in the Republican field, Dobreff said, but her support won’t transfer to Clinton in the fall should she win the party’s nomination. Both Dobreff and her son, Andy, said they would write in Sanders before voting for anyone else.
Ashley Deem, a 19-year-old Marshall University sophomore, also shared some skepticism of a Clinton presidency.
“I’ve always wanted a female president, but I’d rather have a female president that stands for what I believe and what I think needs to be done rather than just having a female president,” she said.
Deem said she would probably vote for Clinton in the general election in November.
Minutes after the polls closed in five states, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders took the stage in Huntington calling on West Virginia voters to join his “political revolution.”
By the end of the night, only one of the five states– Rhode Island– had swung in Sanders’s favor, allowing front runner Hillary Clinton to pull even further ahead in the race to the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Sanders spoke little of Clinton during his hour long speech. He referred to her support of trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Sanders said pushed thousands of American jobs overseas.
Sanders also referred to the well-oiled political machine that is the Clinton campaign, both of Hillary and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in the past.
The Vermont Senator shared his thoughts on income inequality and the unequal distribution of wealth with the estimated 6,000 people in attendance, pointing as he often does at the top 1 percent of income earners.
Calling it a controversial issue for the state, Sanders spoke frankly about climate change and the human induced causes he said he speaks with scientists across the country and around the world about.
Credit John Minchillo / AP Photo
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Democratic Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders in Huntington.
“Number one, we have a moral obligation to our kids and future generations to make certain that we leave this planet in a way that is healthy and habitable,” Sanders said, “but second of all, we have a moral obligation to protect those workers in the fossil fuel industry.”
Sanders says workers in the coal, oil and natural gas industries cannot be left behind as the nation moves beyond an energy mix reliant on fossil fuels, and therefore, workers in those industries should receive the education and training they need for new careers.
Although early voting begins in West Virginia Wednesday, final ballots won’t be cast until the state’s May 10 primary.
“When there are large voter turnouts we win,” Sanders said as he has in many other election night stump speeches, “and when there is low voter turn out we lose.”
Sanders called on West Virginians to turn out in large numbers assuring a victory in the state, but a victory that may be inconsequential to the nomination after Tuesday when Clinton’s delegate count reached 90 percent of the total number she needs to take the party’s official support.
Editor’s Note: For more on election coverage leading up to West Virginia’s May 10 primary, visit elections.wvpublic.org.
