Clinton campaign opens for the area
By JOSELYN KING, For The Weirton Daily TimesArticle Photos
The “Wheeling for Hillary” office has opened at 62 12th St. in downtown Wheeling, and serves as a base for those wishing to volunteer for the campaign. About 30 volunteers turned out for the opening of the headquarters Wednesday night.
The campaign office can be contacted at (304) 234-6640.
Signs attached to the wall asked volunteers to sign lists to help give rides to polls, to campaign door to door, to work phone banks or to stand at roadsides with Hillary banners soliciting “honks and waves.”
“We’ve had a great deal of success with the honks and waves in West Virginia,” Debby Buckland, a field representative for the Clinton campaign, told the campaign workers.
She also mentioned there are plans to bring other staffers to the area, and they will need a place to stay. Buckland was seeking local supporters to allow them to stay with them.
“They’ll be at work at 8:30 a.m. each day, and they’ll be here until 10:30 p.m. at night,” she said. “They won’t need to eat anything. You won’t see them, and they’ll be leaving on May 13.”
Buckland told the volunteers every day until next week’s election “would be busy.”
“Then when we win, we’re going to have a party and whoop it up,” she said.
Tiffanie Hutton, of Brilliant, Ohio, said she already has volunteered for the Clinton campaign — first in Ohio then in Pennsylvania.
“She’s the best candidate out there,” Hutton said of Clinton, D-N.Y..
Robert Lightner, a former sheriff and magistrate in Marshall County, said there is “no comparison between the three candidates” seeking the office of president in 2008. Clinton and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama remain on the Democratic ticket, and U.S. Sen. John McCain is the presumed Republican nominee for the office.
“I’ve been involved with state politics, the state Democratic executive committee, and I’ve worked for a lot of candidates,” Lightner said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that if she is the first female president, she can’t do just a good job. She’s going to have to do an excellent job.”
John Looney, team leader at the West Virginia Veterans Center in Wheeling, added “veterans don’t open up to just anybody.” He said Clinton has visited with wounded veterans and been respectful of them.
“She’s also a thinker who connects with both sides of the aisle,” Looney said. “She develops affective plans.”
John Clarke, of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 141, termed Clinton “the only Democrat running who can win in November,” and said she “cares about working men and women.”
