Local Democrats Stand Up for Clinton

Three Buncombe County elected officials—Asheville Mayor Esther Manheimer, State Senator Terry van Duyn, and State Representative Susan Fisher—held a joint news conference on Monday, Sept. 12, in support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

The event was set against the backdrop of Trump’s visit to Asheville for a rally at Asheville’s US Cellular Center that same afternoon.

Manheimer highlighted the two campaigns’ economic policies as a reason they and other Democrats so strongly support Clinton.

Hillary Clinton has offered “a bold economic plan to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, and that will strengthen the economy of North Carolina,” she said. “They’ll do this by breaking down barriers for people from all walks of life and investing in our roads and bridges, manufacturing, research and technology, clean energy, and small businesses.”

Manheimer noted that, as mayor, she understands the need for such investments. “Hillary … has pledged to make the largest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System.” She noted that Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, an economic adviser to 2008 GOP candidate John McCain, distributed a recent analysis showing that the Clinton jobs plan “would help the North Carolina economy create 325,000 new jobs,” primarily through infrastructure investments. The same analysis concluded that Trump’s plan would lead to a “deep recession,” in which the state would likely lose more than 100,000 jobs.

Van Duyn, who is running unopposed for reelection to the 49th District seat, expanded on Manheimer’s remarks, pointing out that Trump “has thrown small businessmen under the bus his whole career.” Referring to the Zandi study’s prognosis of lost jobs, she said, “That’s more than a statistic. Those people who will be losing jobs are our neighbors, friends, family members. But Donald Trump has never cared about working people. He’s a hypocrite who says he will stand up for working people but who has outsourced his own products to overseas manufacturers.”

Describing the kind of investments she will push for under the Clinton program, Van Duyn said, “We will set bold goals like installing half a million solar panels in North Carolina” by the end of Clinton’s first term, and enough renewable energy sources to power several million homes in NC by the end of a decade. She also promised to expand access to affordable education, through Clinton’s plan to make community college tuition-free.

“The Democrats’ plan helps American small businesses at every step of the way, including policies helping small businesses fight back when they’re getting stiffed by large business,” Van Duyn said. “Trump has no interest in anyone’s interest except his own… His economic plan includes large tax giveaways to millionaires and billionaires like himself. He even wants to undo Wall Street reforms” that have helped rein in the banking sector’s worst excesses.

Van Duyn joined the growing chorus of Democratic elected officials who have called on Trump to release his tax returns. He is the only major-party candidate in 40 years to refuse to do so. And she called him out for supporting the NC legislature’s voter ID plan that was recently struck down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the plan was clearly based on limiting voting based on race, and therefore unconstitutional.

Fisher, who represents District 114 and is running (also unopposed) for a seventh term, focused primarily on the difference between Trump’s misogynistic attitude and Clinton’s lifelong support for women, children, and families—and for both economic and social equality.

“Hillary Clinton,” she said, “has spent her entire life fighting for opportunities for women and girls, for equal access to jobs, to reproductive choice.” That work began “right out of law school with her work for the Children’s Defense Fund, and then in Arkansas as the chief motivator for the program Advocates for Children and Families.”

Fisher pointed out that more than 20 years ago Clinton led the U.S. delegation to the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, an international forum at which she proclaimed that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” Long before that speech, and constantly since, Clinton “has advocated tirelessly for the rights of women and children and for better healthcare for all people.

“Her advocacy helped establish the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which guarantees women and men the right not to lose a job because of staying home with a sick family member,” Fisher told the Urban News. “But it needs improvement; the FMLA guarantees the job, but not a pay. She’s still fighting to improve the act to guarantee paid leave for providing family care.”

Fisher also noted that Clinton was behind the CHIP program, which provides affordable healthcare to more than 8 million women and children, and is still working to increase funding for it. “She also began the national campaign to end teen pregnancy,” Fisher said. “She sponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Lily Ledbetter fair pay act.

“As president she will continue fighting every day to ensure that all women and girls in America and around the world have the same opportunities as men. She’ll do this by closing the pay gap, making sure that equal work gets equal pay, fighting to promote pay transparency across the economy, and to expand the Affordable Care Act.”

Fisher contrasted Clinton’s focus on the needs of women, children, and families with Trump’s lifelong history of demeaning women, from disparaging them as “fat pigs” and worse epithets to calling for criminal punishments, including imprisonment, for women who have abortions.

Two other reporters present, unable to resist the current memes of the campaign, asked the three officials about Clinton’s pneumonia diagnosis and her “deplorables” comment about Trump’s supporters. Fisher dismissed the reporter’s concerns, noting that she herself recently recovered from a bout of bronchitis. “My symptoms were very, very similar to hers, coughing and feeling tired. And I’ve completely recovered.” She called the media’s obsession with the issue “nothing but a talking point.”

Van Duyn pointed out, “We call this the silly season. We focus on sound bites; that’s what you all [the press] focus on. That’s why I talk about the work Hillary’s done, as a working woman, as a mother.”

She acknowledged that Clinton’s comment “is not what she would have said if she’d thought about it.” She continued, “Certainly not all his supporters are deplorable, but at the core of his support, he has spent much of this campaign making fun of the handicapped, of minorities, of women, and that’s a terrible thing to do. Whereas Hillary has been working hard for 30 to 40 years for families and children, that’s what she has worked for all her life. And that dedication comes from a place of love for this country”—a love which, she implied, Trump lacks.