Women’s rights, education focus at Clinton event in Rock Hill | The Herald

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton said she believes this presidential election is more important than any other she’s seen – including the two in which her father, former President Bill Clinton, ran for election and re-election.

“I just feel a different sense of urgency and responsibility,” Clinton said Saturday during a stop in Rock Hill on behalf of her mother’s presidential campaign. The new sense of urgency comes from being the mother of a 16-month-old daughter and now pregnant with her second child, she said.

“Whomever we elect as our president will play such a profound role in shaping the country and the world that my children will grow up in,” she said. “Everything I care most about is at risk.”

Chelsea Clinton spent Saturday stumping for her mother, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in South Carolina.

During her town hall-style stop at Kenneth Monroe Transformation Center, she went on the defensive against Democratic rival Bernie Sanders’ ideas for healthcare and public education, and also answered residents’ questions that varied from emails to appealing to young voters.

Healthcare has been a contentious issue between Clinton and Sanders. Chelsea Clinton on Saturday chastised Sanders’ proposal for a single-payer system over improving the Affordable Care Act .

“We now have 90 percent of Americans covered under the Affordable Care Act,” she said. “... We know we need to improve the Affordable Care Act, but we need to build on it. We cannot afford to go back and start over again.”

Naturally, the recurring theme during the “Women for Hillary” event was women’s rights and equal pay. Clinton recalled her mother’s experiences abroad as Secretary of State.

Chelsea Clinton said her mother made it clear to U.S. embassies around the world, “it was everyone’s responsibility who was representing America abroad to care about women’s rights and children’s rights. These are issues she’s been working on for longer than I’ve been alive. She had to write her law firm’s maternity policy when she got pregnant with me because no one had ever gotten pregnant and wanted to come back to work.”

A resident asked about the lingering indecisiveness of some Democrats over her mother’s use of a private email server as Secretary of State. Chelsea Clinton said there was nothing more to say on that, and noted comments by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said this week that he disagreed with a State Department decision to retroactively classify emails from his personal account while he was in office.

“This is a question she has been asked repeatedly, and it’s a question she’s answered repeatedly,” she said. “I hope that people would look at what she has consistently said – that she never sent or received any information that was classified at the time. ... I hope that not only what my mom has said, but what other well-respected servants like Colin Powell are saying, will illuminate for people that this is really a political issue and not a substantive one.”

Chelsea Clinton disagreed with Sanders’ proposal for free college tuition, saying it would take away the incentive for public schools to control costs.

“My mom has a different view of what equity is in our country,” she said. “She believes that students who come from families making $250,000 or less should be allowed to go tuition-free, and everyone should be allowed to go debt-free to school. But she doesn’t believe that students that come from families making more than $250,000 should be allowed to go tuition-free.”

S.C. Rep. John King, D-York, who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, said Saturday that the former Secretary of State “has a clear plan out there as to whatever she’s offering for us to progress, making sure it’s not going to be a burden on the states. We don’t have that from the other side.”

Brooks Hammett, 19, a student at Winthrop University, said his family has been longtime supporters of the Clintons in public office.

“I like how she compared Bernie’s plan for affordable college to her mother’s plan,” Hammett said of Chelsea Clinton’s visit Saturday. “It takes a lot to explain how it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Free college!’ You have to be able to listen to how she’s describing to get a full comprehension of it. A lot of people don’t want to listen.”