Several first ladies of Virginia took part in a “Next Generation Leaders” discussion Thursday at Newcomb Hall.
The event — associated with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign — featured current First Lady of Virginia Dorothy McAuliffe and former First Ladies Anne Holton, Lynda Johnson Robb and Jeannie P. Baliles. Holton is married to Clinton’s running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who also previously served as the state’s governor.
The event, along with a similar event in Richmond, aimed to kickstart “Women In Action,” which is a gathering of women from Virginia devoted to increase voter turnout for Clinton and Kaine, according to a release.
During the panel, the first ladies spoke about what they think is at stake in the presidential election and encouraged the audience to register to vote by the state’s Oct. 17 deadline.
“I think it was held here to motivate people [to vote],” University Democrats President Sam Tobin, a fourth-year College student, said. “We’ve got 3,000 [registered students] but we can get a lot more in the next week.”
With an audience of approximately 75 people, Holton said she felt this event was “a good step in the right direction.”
“I felt like the crowd was a good crowd, a lot of people turned out,” Holton said in an interview with The Cavalier Daily. “This is a campaign where the person-to-person contact is making all the difference and the extent we can get more folks energized about helping spread the word, making sure everybody knows that Oct. 17 is the voter registration deadline [in Virginia].”
After each panelist spoke, Holton asked the audience what was important to them in this election. The panel also took questions from the audience.
One audience member asked about intersectional feminism and its role in the campaign.
Baliles asked those in the audience not only to support Clinton, but also to bring underrepresented groups into the “election fold.”
“Looking at this wonderful audience of women, particularly, there aren't enough men out there, there aren't enough people of color out there, and we need for you to not only be for Hillary to work hard for Hillary … but to bring into the fold, or at least into the election fold, the people that I do not see represented here,” Baliles said.
A common theme throughout the event was an emphasis on personal communication between the Clinton campaign and voters. Holton said she wanted more time to hear from the students.
“It’s never long enough, I would have loved to have heard from students for much, much longer,” Holton said. “We had a good time visiting with the students, so we got to hear from them, some of the issues that are important to them, and as I suspected the issues that are important to them are the issues that I hear from other millennials.”
The audience raised issues related to racism, education, gun control, healthcare and student debt, among others, which Holton described “the [issues] that matter to young people.”
“Democrats are right with them, and frankly the other side is not,” Holton said.
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