Pavlik, youth back Hillary at Valley rally

The best fighters are those with experience, the Youngstown boxer told Clinton and the crowd.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

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.”

Clinton pointed to the economy as the “No. 1 issue,” and she slammed Republican front-runner John McCain for wanting to “continue Bush’s policies.”

She said that she wants to get back to having a “manufacturing policy” in America.

“A country that doesn’t make anything can’t stay strong,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable that most of the steel we have now comes from other countries.”

Clinton also pledged to do away with “special-interest giveaways Bush has doled out” to Wall Street, oil companies and pharmaceutical companies.

Clinton also said the country is more dependent on foreign oil now than it was on 9/11.

“They take our money and fund extremism against us. I’m not into holding hands with the Saudis. I’m into holding them accountable,” she said.

Clinton said the country needs clean, renewable energy, and producing it will create “green-collar jobs that put Youngstown to work.”

Health care, of course, was front and center with Clinton as she assured she has a way to pay for a universal plan.

She said that children deserve a good start with preschool education, and she wants to see college graduates spend “some years in public service jobs” in exchange for having their school debt forgiven.

She also said that America needs to restore its place in the world, and that will start with the end of the war in Iraq. Veterans of that war, she said, deserve compensation and support when they come home.

Clinton and Obama are in a close fight for Ohio in this Tuesday’s primary. Ohio and Texas are critical for Clinton. Texas’ primary is also Tuesday.

“If you give me the honor of your vote Tuesday, I promise I will work for you every single day,” she said. “Put a champion back in the White House.”