Pavlik, youth back Hillary at Austintown rally

AUSTINTOWN — They’re not all voting for Barack Obama — the twentysomethings, that is.

Many were there, scattered among the crowd of 1,100 watching and listening to Hillary Clinton at her rally Sunday at Austintown Fitch High School.

National polls have given the impression that Obama has captured the youth vote.

Brianna Pauley, 21, of Canfield begs to differ. “I support [Clinton’s] views on health care,” she said. “That’s a huge problem right now. I like that she wants health care for everybody,” said Pauley, who’s in training to be a nurse and recently encountered a hospital waiting room where half the people there didn’t have insurance.

“The middle class is paying for that,” Pauley said, adding that she doesn’t like Obama’s lack of experience. “His record isn’t there.”

Randy Keller, 25, of Warren concurred. “Health care is the big issue. Everybody should be covered,” he said.

“Especially in this community,” said his sister Rachele, 16, who said she wishes she could vote.

It’s Clinton’s experience that makes her valuable, echoed many of her supporters crowded into the Fitch gymnasium.

“She’s been there. She has the experience,” Randy Keller said.

Joyce Hurr, 72, of Youngstown said as much. “She knows what went on in eight years in the White House.”

When Clinton finally made her way through her screaming, sign-waving supporters to a small square stage in the midst of the crowd, she had a familiar figure with her.

Kelly Pavlik, the middleweight boxing champion from Youngstown, escorted her to the platform, then introduced her.

“The best fighters,” he told the crowd, “are the ones that have the experience.”

Pavlik said he’s concerned about what the future holds for his 2-year-old daughter.

“We do need change right now — we gotta start making that,” he said. “And I do think Hillary’s the person.”

“I love what he said about his daughter,” Clinton responded. “That’s what it’s really about. What kind of world will we leave our children and grandchildren?”

Clinton said she wants a comeback for Youngstown and Ohio in economic prosperity.

“Sometimes, you get knocked down and don’t know it’s coming,” she said. “I remember Black Monday,” she said. “A lot of hard-working people showed up to find the gates of the steel mills padlocked.

“Like, ‘You don’t matter anymore; we’re picking up and going somewhere else,’” she continued.

“But I have seen in past weeks the grit and determination of the people of Ohio,” she said, adding that “we need someone in the White House again who is a fighter.”

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.