Traditionally, the general presidential election season is supposed to kick off after Labor Day.
This being 2016, it kicked off a day or 400 before that.
Marking the "start" of the general election season, Democratic contender Hillary Clinton wasted no time targeting ever-important areas of major swing states, namely the Tampa Bay area. In a recreation center on USF's Tampa campus, she offered a litany of policies she'd push for as president, focusing largely on the economy, national security and everyone's favorite Republican possible future president, Donald Trump.
Her venue was much smaller than the nearby USF Sun Dome, where Trump gave a speech to well over 10,000 in February, but it was packed to capacity with about 1,600 supporters even as hundreds were waiting in line.
She opened her speech with an obvious crowd-pleaser — a comment about the USF Bulls' recent win.
In talking about her plan to grow the economy, she mentioned putting people to work upgrading the country's infrastructure — something cities like Tampa and St. Pete need in order to, for example, deal with the flooding that often results from storms.
“We're going to make the biggest investment in new jobs since World War II. Infrastructure jobs like those here at the port. Our roads, our bridges, our tunnels, our ports, our airports," she said. "They need work and there are millions of jobs to be done. In addition to what you can see, what about our water systems, our sewer systems? We need a new… electric grid to be able to take in renewable energy…”
The crowd cheered loudly at her mention of renewable energy.
She contrasted her economic plan (which included a proposal to curb student loan debt) with that of Trump.
“He actually has proposed giving trillions — and I mean that with a T — trillions in tax cuts for big corporations, millionaires, billionaires and Wall Street money managers. Not only would it explode our national debt, it would lead to massive cuts in education and health care,” she said.
She did the same thing with foreign policy, mentioning some of Trump's utterances on national security that would, for any other candidate, be career-ending gaffes, like his advocation of torture and use of nuclear weapons.
“It's so mindboggling," she said. "When I hear these things, I think they can't be true.”
On guns (Trump has repeatedly said she's anti-Second Amendment), Clinton called for universal background checks (not exactly the same thing as wanting to take your guns away).
Shortly after Clinton ended her 45-minute speech by calling on the students in the audience to register to vote, Trump's people fired off a statement bashing her over recent developments in the Clinton Foundation controversy, namely a Scripps story that questioned the legality of the foundation's failure to disclose foreign donations.
“Hillary Clinton’s remarks today in Tampa are exactly what you would expect to hear from a candidate who took off the month of August and woke up in September losing the election. Clinton cannot escape the endemic corruption of the Clinton Foundation, which was exposed in a bombshell report today for violating New York state laws and regulations requiring disclosure of foreign contributions,” read the statement, attributed to campaign spokesperson Jason Miller.
Before she spoke, State Sen. Arthenia Joyner, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and others warmed up the crowd.
Joyner reminded the audience that Floridians know what it's like to elect a super-rich businessman with no political experience.
Buckhorn noted the diversity of the crowd and condemned Trump's comments on race.
"Look around. This is a city that celebrates diversity as a strength, not as a weakness," he said.
This article appears in Sep 1-8, 2016.