Hide Transcript Show Transcript AND A FORM OF DISMEMBERMENT. DOZENS OF PEOPLE PACKED BOGAERTS THIS AFTERNOON TO HEAR FRO HOPEFUL ELIZABETH WARREN WLWT. NEWS 5S RICHARD CHILD’S WAS ON HAND AS THE MASSACHUSETTS SENATOR MADE HER PITCH TO GREATER CINCINNATI VOTER WAIT, WHERE ARE WE? OH, UH IN A STUMP SPEECH PUNCTUATED BY HUMAN CROWD RESPONDS, MASSACHUSETTS, SENATOR. ELIZABETH WARREN MADE HER PITCH TO TRI STATE VOTERS TODAY A MINIMUM WAGE JOB IN AMERICA WILL NOT KEEP A MAMA AND A BABY OUT OF POVERTY THAT IS WRONG. AND THAT IS WHY I AM IN THIS SITE MANY WAITED THROUGH THE EARLY MORNING HOURS TO GET A PLACE INSIDE EXCITED THAT THE CAMPAIGN HAS COME TO OHIO. IT REALLY MEANS A LOT TO GET OUT HERE AND I SEE THE CANDIDATES LIKE THIS BECAUSE IT ALLOWS YOU TO LIKE INTERACT SOMEONE A LITTLE BIT LOU LIKE THE ENERGY FEEL LIKE YOU’RE PART OF THE MOVEMENT IN LIKE SUPPORTING THESE CANDIDATES GETTING THE WHITE HOUSE 1500 CROWDED BOGAERTS CONCERT VENUE FOLLOWING WARNS VISION IN A TOWN HALL-STYLE QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WHEN EVEN ADDRESSED THE FAMILY OF OTTO WARMBIER WHEN OUTLINE FOREIGN POLICY T BAR ON NORTH KOREA, ITS OWN PEOPLE AND HOW IT TREATS OTHERS WHO FALL WITHIN ITS WEB LOCAL REPUBLICANS GATHERED ACROSS VINE STREET TO EXPLAIN WHY WARREN IS NOT RIGHT FOR OHIO. HE’S FOR ELIMINATING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WHICH WOULD MAKE OHIO, YOU KNOW NOT PART OF WHAT WE’RE USED TO HEAR THAT IS BEING A SWING STATE AND IMPORTANT STATE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS AS EARLY SPRING TURNS TO SUMMER VOTERS YOUNG AND OLD ARE BEGINNING TO FEEL THE ENERGY OF THIS 2020 RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE HEATING UP. IT’S VERY IMPORTANT TO BE HERE BECAUSE THEIR FUTURE FUTURE AND A STEAK, SO I’M TRYING T JUST TO HEAR AS MANY CANDIDATES AS POSSIBLE TO HELP YOU MAKE THE BEST DECISION I CAN I JUST SHE JUST STANDS FOR WHAT I STAND FOR AND SHE’S JUST SUCH A ROLE MODEL THAT IS JUST SO GREAT TO BE HERE WITH EVERYONE THAT FEELS THE WAY I DO IT AFTER ONE HOUR DISCUSSION THIS CROWD EXCITED TO GET A CHANCE TO HEAR FROM THEIR CANDIDATE JUST LIKE THE REPUBLICAN CROWD ACROSS THE STREET, BUT HE VERY CLEAR THAT THE CAMPAIGN SEASON FOR 2020 IS UNDERWAY IN COREYVILLE RICHARD CHILD’S WLWT NEWS 5 AND THE 202 Advertisement U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren greeted by a rousing crowd 1,500 pack Bogart’s to hear the Massachusetts Presidential Hopeful Share Shares Copy Link Copy In a stump speech punctuated by humor and response from the crowd, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, made her pitch to tristate voters.The town hall-style rally featured questions and answers from some in the crowd, and an hourlong speech in which Warren outlined her qualifications and vision for the Oval Office.Many, like Gordon Goodwin, a Miami University student, waited through the early morning hours to get a place inside. Goodwin said he was excited to be up close as the campaign comes to Ohio. "It really means a lot to get out here and see the candidates like this. It allows you to interact with someone and allows you to be a part of the energy and feel like a part of the movement by supporting these candidates in their run to the White House," Goodwin said.A crowd of 1,500 showed up to Bogart's concert venue following Warren's vision in a town hall style question and answer session. Warren even addressed the family of Otto Warmbier when outlying foreign policy. "We have to bring all the pressure we can on North Korea, not only the nuclear program but how it treats its own people, but also how it treats others who fall within its web," Warren said before making reference to the Wyoming student who died shortly after returning to the area from a North Korean prison.Local Republicans gathered across Vine Street to argue that Warren is not right for Ohio.Hamilton County GOP Chairman Alex Triantafilou said Warren’s ideas will weaken the nation and lessen Ohio’s influence in particular. "She's for eliminating the Electoral College, which would make Ohio not part of what we are used to here, and that is being a swing state and important state in the presidential election," Triantafilou said.As early spring turns to summer, voters on both sides of the aisle are beginning to feel the energy of this 2020 race to the White House is heating up.Susan Dixon of Wyoming said this election is critical. "It’s really important to be here, because the future is at stake. I'm trying to come to as many events as possible and hear as many candidates as possible to make the best decision I can. "New voter Sydney North says she is inspired by Warren and energized to be in this crowd. "It’s just to me, as a voter, she stands for what I stand for and she’s just such a role model that it is great to be here with everyone that feels like I do," North said.<doc-sep>CHILLICOTHE, OHIO (Reuters) - At a veterans hall in the mostly white, working-class town of Chillicothe, Ohio, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to about 200 people on Friday about her plans to fight the opioid epidemic, Washington corruption and economic inequality. Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) speaks during a townhall event in Columbus, Ohio, U.S., May 10, 2019. REUTERS/Maddie McGarvey Warren’s decision to campaign in Ohio - a state President Donald Trump won by eight percentage points in 2016 - so soon in the Democratic presidential nominating battle is telling. Ohio does not host one of next year’s early nominating contests. Yet there is growing consensus among Democrats that a nominee’s ability to beat Trump in November 2020 is the number one priority - and Warren aims to convince voters there and elsewhere that she has broad enough appeal to do it. “I believe that if you’re running for president of the United States you ought to be running for president of all the people and not just spend your time in a handful of so-called battleground states,” Warren told reporters at an earlier stop on Friday in Kermit, West Virginia, a solidly Republican state. Party strategists and voters are divided over what type of candidate is best positioned to take on the president. Some believe it is critical to have a nominee who can win back the working-class, white voters who supported Barack Obama but then handed Trump victories in formerly blue states in the Midwest like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Others say a candidate who can drive turnout by appealing to young, minority and first-time voters is the best path to the White House. Ed Rendell, a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, thinks moderate candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden or U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar would be best at wooing back working-class voters in the non-urban areas of his state. Warren’s progressive policies – she backs free college tuition, a wealth tax and Medicare-for-all healthcare – make her an “easy target” for Trump to accuse her of being a socialist, Rendell said. But he agrees with other Democrats who say where candidates stand on the issues may not be the deciding factor for voters. “I’ve never seen voters more single-minded than on the issue of beating Donald Trump,” Rendell said, adding he would work to win Pennsylvania for whoever emerges as the nominee. HIGH STAKES Recent opinion surveys show electability topping issues for many Democrats. In a Monmouth University poll of 987 likely Democratic primary voters conducted May 2-7 in New Hampshire, which hosts the second nominating contest, 68 percent said they would choose a candidate they did not agree with on most issues if the individual were a stronger candidate against Trump. Just 25 percent said they would pick the candidate they agreed with on most issues but who would have a hard time beating Trump. Forty-nine percent of Democrats in an Ipsos online poll of 960 adults taken April 29-30 said the ability to beat Trump in the general election is the most important factor in choosing a primary candidate, ahead of policies on healthcare, jobs and the environment. “Democrats view this not as a regular election but as an existential election for the country. The stakes are high. Each candidate is trying to show how they will take on Trump,” said Ben LaBolt, a former spokesman for Obama’s re-election campaign. Ideally, a candidate will emerge like Obama who can appeal to a wide swath of Democratic voters, he said. With just 3 percent of Democrats in the Ipsos poll picking Warren as the candidate most likely to beat Trump, the Massachusetts senator has work to do. Forty-six percent chose Biden as the strongest Trump opponent, and 25 percent said they did not know who was best positioned from the field of 22 Democrats running. Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper rejected the idea that only a moderate Democrat can make inroads there. As a roadmap, he pointed to Senator Sherrod Brown’s re-election in 2018, when he won by a higher margin than in 2012 when Obama was on the ballot. Brown, like Warren, focuses on themes of income inequality and creating an economy that protects and benefits middle- and working-class households. Pepper said that economic message resonates in rural and suburban areas, even if other parts of a candidate’s platform are more liberal than voters would typically support. “These are the places that responded to Donald Trump saying ‘let’s make America great again,’” Pepper said of Chillicothe. “A ticket that includes that kind of candidate like Sherrod Brown’s did and can hold down losses in rural parts of the state and suburbs and energize our urban core – that combination is the ticket that will win Ohio.” In largely rural Ross County, where Warren met with voters on Friday, Trump got roughly two-thirds of the vote in 2016. But Chillicothe Mayor Luke Feeney, a Democrat, said the party should not count it out. “I told her Ross County is definitely in play in 2020 and Chillicothe is definitely in play in 2020 and the state of Ohio is a swing state in 2020, not a red state,” Feeney said as he introduced Warren at her event. Retired teacher Kathleen Burgess, 70, was in the crowd. She said Warren’s early call to impeach Trump pleased her as a progressive voter, but she thought Warren’s economic policies also would appeal to swing voters in the state. “By advocating for free public college and healthcare, those are kitchen table issues for working-class people,” Burgess said.<doc-sep>Voters encountering Elizabeth Warren on the presidential campaign trail these days often seem surprised. After a packed gathering at an elementary school in Concord, N.H., in April, a 40-something woman told me she had expected Warren to be more like Hillary Clinton but found them miles apart. A college student who caught Warren’s speech in Hanover said he was perplexed to learn that a woman once described by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political director as a “threat to free enterprise” in fact believes in entrepreneurship and markets. And at an event in a Portsmouth high school cafeteria, a retired teacher told me he’d heard Warren was a “Ted Cruz–like partisan” but instead found her charming. “She seems like a real doll,” he shrugged. “Can I say that?” Warren first rose to fame for her withering interrogations of miscreant bankers and evasive government officials during the financial crisis 10 years ago. Since then, powerful critics in the Republican Party, as well as her own, have painted her as too liberal, too divisive, too wonky, too “strident”—that freighted euphemism so often applied to assertive women. So when I sat down with the Massachusetts Senator on a recent Tuesday, in a windowless office in Washington, I shared those voters’ surprise. Supporters at a house party at River’s Bend Bed & Breakfast in Iowa Falls on May 3. Krista Schlueter for TIME As we spoke, Warren danced in her seat, talked effusively about her family and offered a series of funny extended political metaphors borrowed from HBO’s Game of Thrones. At one point, as I struggled to formulate a question, she intuited what I was trying to ask and, conveying her readiness, extended her hands, locked her elbows and began gently flapping her arms like a bird preparing to take off in high winds. “O.K., O.K., I can answer this,” she said. Which might as well be a motto for Warren’s presidential campaign. She has set herself apart in a Democratic field of more than 20 candidates by offering more than a dozen complex policy proposals designed to address an array of problems, from unaffordable housing and child care to the overwhelming burden of student debt. Her anticorruption initiative would target the Washington swamp, and her anti­trust measures would transform Silicon Valley. On May 8 she unveiled a $100 billion plan to fight the opioid crisis. This flurry of white papers, often rendered in fine detail, appears to suggest a technocratic approach to governing. But in fact, her ­vision, taken as a whole, is closer to a populist political revolution. Warren breaks for lunch between campaign events at the Stomping Grounds Cafe in Ames, Iowa. Krista Schlueter for TIME Warren’s policy proposals have become her brand. On the campaign trail, her off-the-cuff phrase “I have a plan for that!” became so ubiquitous that it morphed into a viral applause line; in Iowa, supporters printed the accidental slogan on T-shirts. Her campaign, staffers say, is built on the conviction that voters want substance, not theatrics, and will throw in for the candidate who puts forth serious ideas to create change. It’s an audacious bet in the Donald Trump era. Voters tend to tell pollsters they prioritize policy over personality. But they said that in 2016 too, when Clinton’s detailed agenda was no match for Trump’s simple slogans and schoolyard nicknames. As her Democratic competitors offer enticing promises largely devoid of specifics, Warren insists on ­talking nuts and bolts. In her stump speech, she describes the mechanics of a tax that would fund her universal child-care plan, to pick just one example among many. Warren greets supporters at a house party in Iowa Falls on May 3. Krista Schlueter for TIME Warren’s investment in substance over style is not her only gamble. Over the past few months, she has fired her finance director, eschewed high-­dollar donors and hired as much as 10 times as many staffers in early voting states as most of her competitors. While others focus on big money and flashy rallies, she’s building a campaign designed to maximize the amount of time she spends in living rooms and community centers talking about what she would do as President. Warren supporter Barbara Weniger came all the way from Boston with cookies for the Iowa Falls House Party on May 3. Krista Schlueter for TIME It’s not clear whether these bets will pay off. What she’s proposing is a return to a bygone economic model that hasn’t existed for at least a ­generation—a tough sell among even staunch members of her own party. And while she has emerged as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination, she still trails front runner Joe Biden by a wide margin in both national polls and the latest surveys of the first four primary states. She doesn’t have the die-hard fan base that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders built in 2016, and her campaign may be haunted by the specter of Clinton’s failure. Many voters who like Warren worry about nominating a wonky, blond woman four years after another wonky blond woman lost to Trump. “People are saying, if it takes a white dude to get this guy out of office, so be it,” says Kelly Whitman, a Pennsylvania voter who heard Warren speak in New Hampshire. Warren and her son, Alex, in the elevator on the way up to an organizing event at Iowa State University on May 3. Krista Schlueter for TIME But the first votes in the 2020 primaries will not be cast for nine months. In the meantime, Warren, 69, is committed to running what she describes as “a different kind of campaign”—­offering a more unapologetically liberal agenda than any presidential candidate in recent memory. “I want to fix the systems in this country so they work for Americans, not just for giant corporations or Big Pharma or the Goldman Sachs guys,” she says. “That’s not just my political career. That’s my whole life’s work.” Warren on the campaign trail on May 3 in Iowa, where she’s hired dozens of paid staff to compete in the first caucus state. Krista Schlueter for TIME I first met Warren in mid-April, in the basement of a New Hampshire hotel. She and her family had just wolfed down a lunch of Mexican takeout; a side table was littered with guacamole containers, and her golden retriever, Bailey, sat nearby, panting amiably. I asked if she thought she could win that elusive demographic: white, working-class voters who supported Barack Obama in 2008 and President Trump in 2016. She didn’t miss a beat. “Those are my people,” she said, and then repeated it, sitting stick-straight in her chair. “Those are my people.” Warren, née Elizabeth Herring, was born in 1949 into a lower-middle-class family in Oklahoma City. All three of her brothers were in the military; two are Republicans. Warren herself was a registered Republican until the mid-1990s, although she says she was not very political at that time. Her family’s financial struggles mirrored those of many alienated voters in middle-class America today—a visceral experience that she says has defined and informed her politics. Warren's third-grade school photo. Courtesy Elizabeth Warren When she was a child, Warren’s father sold everything from carpeting to fencing and housewares. In the early 1960s, he suffered a heart attack and could no longer work, plunging the family into crisis. Warren recalls learning the word foreclosure by listening to her parents’ hushed conversations after bedtime. In an effort to keep the family home, Warren’s mother got a minimum-wage job at a nearby Sears. Warren remembers her walking to work in the same nice dress she wore to weddings and graduations. Warren with her parents Pauline and Donald Jones Herring at Rutgers Law graduation, circa 1976. Courtesy Elizabeth Warren Warren also remembers her own rocky path through young adulthood. When she was 19, she dropped out of George ­Washington University, where she had earned a debate scholarship, when she was still a teenager, to marry her first husband, Jim Warren, with whom she had her two children.<doc-sep>
(CNN) — First in West Virginia and then again, hours later, in Ohio, Sen. Elizabeth Warren posed the same question. Raise your hand, the Massachusetts Democrat said, if you “know someone who’s been caught in the grips of addictions” or “who’s been lost to addiction.” Twice Warren asked and twice the people seated around her in folding chairs lifted their arms, almost matter-of-factly, to say that, yes, they knew. Warren in OH, as she did in WV, asks the audience if they know anyone who’s struggled or died from addiction: pic.twitter.com/hrkuVLZAam — Greg Krieg (@GregJKrieg) May 10, 2019 Warren’s trip here followed the Wednesday rollout of her opioid crisis proposal, which would provide $100 billion for treatment, provider support and funding for research over a decade. On Friday in Kermit, West Virginia, the 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful said the plan would seek to go around state governments and deliver the resources to community leaders in the hardest hit towns and cities. West Virginia and Ohio are the two deadliest states for drug overdoses, according to recent federal surveys, and Kermit is often cited as ground zero of the opioid epidemic. A congressional report revealed last year that a pharmaceutical company had shipped more than 3 million prescription pills over 10 months – about 10,000 a day on average – to a single pharmacy in the town of about 400 people. More than 47,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The plan from Warren and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, called the CARE Act, would focus on the epicenters of the epidemic and provide support to state and nonprofit recovery efforts. They introduced a similar bill in 2018. “Addiction is a medical problem. It needs a medical solution and I’ve got a plan for that,” Warren said inside a firehouse in Kermit on Friday morning, outlining her proposal before turning her focus to the drug companies. “We need to hold those executives personally liable. I’m talking handcuffs and perp walks. Because until there’s some personal responsibility – so long as it’s upside, they can just keep getting richer and richer and all the money is on one side and all the hurt is on the other.” About three hours north, in Chillicothe, Ohio, Warren was introduced by the Democratic mayor, Luke Feeney, who called his city “a bellwether for the state” heading into the 2020 elections. As Warren shook hands and took pictures after the discussion there, Feeney told CNN he wasn’t surprised by the response to Warren’s first question. “If all the hands didn’t go up, they probably could have,” he said. “I’m glad that there’s candidates talking about a plan. We are seeing maybe the epidemic slow down some, but the impact, the long-term impact that we’re going to see, with children being raised by grandparents or great grandparents – we’re just not equipped for that and we need a plan and infrastructure to back that plan up.” The federal response, which has ticked up under the Trump administration, was still “too slow coming,” Feeney said. Warren’s proposal to bypass state governments and allow local elected officials, presumably with better handles on how and where to direct the funds, appealed to him. “Voters are intelligent and I think they’ve become somewhat frustrated and desensitized somewhat – that’s an understatement – with the gridlock,” he said. “Conveying that there is hope, that there is some future (is important), because otherwise it’s hopeless, right? And that’s not the business that I want to be in.” But in a region that has suffered such devastating losses, it will be difficult to convince some voters – especially Republicans already skeptical or outright disdainful of Democrats like Warren – that this time around, even with the new promise of $100 billion and a detailed plan of action, will be different. Steps outside Warren’s event in Kermit, a group of men – most of them President Donald Trump supporters – stood quietly with their arms crossed. About a hundred yards down the road a more vocal band, their cars and trucks festooned in “Trump 2020” banners and flags, honked and chanted. Mingo County is in the heart of Trump Country. The President defeated Hillary Clinton there by nearly 70 percentage points in 2016. Eric May, an Iraq War veteran who lives in town, was mostly silent as he watched Warren discuss her plan.