Chelsea Clinton makes campaign stop in Minnesota

JIM GEHRZ/STAR TRIBUNE
Chelsea Clinton posed for photographs follower her remarks and a question-and-answer session Wednesday at the Minneapolis home of Karen and House Minority Leader Paul Thissen.

Chelsea Clinton made her first campaign stop in Minnesota on Wednesday, visiting House Minority Leader Paul Thissen's south Minneapolis home to build support for her mother's presidential bid.

She urged the crowd of more than 250 people, including Gov. Mark Dayton, not to take for granted Hillary Clinton's victory in Minnesota's caucuses, particularly after her narrow victory this week over Democratic rival Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa.

As Hillary Clinton and Sanders are battling ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Chelsea Clinton emphasized her mother's record on fighting for expanded health care, women's reproductive rights and equal pay. She said progress in those areas was at risk.

"Our next president will play such a fundamental role in shaping the country and the world that my daughter … and her future little brother or sister will grow up in," Clinton said.

Clinton described the election as the most important in her lifetime, in part because it will be her first as a mother: she has a 16-month-old daughter, Charlotte, and a baby due this summer.

The crowd applauded when Clinton said her mother supported paid leave, particularly for new mothers, as well as tax credits for caregivers.

Clinton noted that with threats to women's rights, the next president would be particularly significant because of the opportunity to appoint three justices to the Supreme Court.

Clinton also stopped at the Eden Prairie home of Laura Bishop and Chuck Weber to meet with caucusgoers, and spoke at the home of Lisa Cotter in Minneapolis.

Dayton told the crowd that after spending six years with Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Senate, he realized that "she's the hardest-working politician I've ever seen," and that nobody in the presidential field matches her qualifications and experience.

Thissen sought to link Clinton's election with Democrats' efforts to take back the Minnesota House this fall, highlighting their shared promotion of workplace protections for women and expanded health care.

"Those are things that Hillary Clinton is going to be fighting for in the White House for us and we're going to have a great partner … in Washington, which we absolutely need to make the progress that I think Minnesotans want," Thissen said.

Alice O'Hara, 53, told Chelsea Clinton about how her mother struggled to find work as an attorney in the 1940s, and was paid a fraction of what her male counterparts made when she finally did land a job. O'Hara told a reporter after the event that she supported Hillary Clinton — who had also worked as an attorney — for her promotion of equal rights for women, along with her broader vision for the country.

"All of the issues Chelsea brought up, these are the things I really believe in," O'Hara said.

Maya Rao • 612-673-4210