LIMA — The first face-to-face debate between Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was anticipated to draw as many as 100 million viewers Monday evening, including those who gathered at viewing parties at both the Democratic and Republican campaign headquarters in Lima, along with viewing parties at several other locations, including Ohio Northern University.
Watching the debate from the Democratic headquarters, Jazmine Snook, 19, a freshman at Ohio State-Lima and former Bernie Sanders supporter, was impressed with Clinton’s performance during the initial part of the debate.
“If you focus on the vocabulary, Clinton is focusing more on people, while Trump is focusing more on China and Mexico, more on money,” she said. “We’re not even 10 minutes into the debate, and he’s already lost his composure and lashed out.”
At the Republican viewing party, LuAnn Lause, 62, of Lima, was glad to see Trump highlighting the issue of missing and deleted emails during Clinton’s tenure as U.S. Secretary of State.
“He’s coming across very presidential,” she said. “He needs to talk about her emails and the failed policies of Barack Obama. She would just be four more years of that, and we can’t afford four more years of the same.”
Allen County Democratic Party Chairman Jeff Rex was also impressed with Clinton, expressing hope that she would stay focused on the issues and not on responding to her opponent.
“Trump is doing his best to get under her skin and hasn’t really offered anything of substance,” he said. “He’s trying to bait her. The personalities are coming out.”
Like Lause, Rex’s Allen County Republican Party counterpart, Keith Cheney, felt the email scandal was a key point for Trump during the debate.
“I think of the most important points that has come up in the debate so far has to be Donald Trump saying, ‘Look, I’ll release my tax returns when you release the 33,000 emails you deleted,” he said. “She immediately became defensive about that.”
ONU prelaw and political science student Troy Brinkman, 20, maintained that while both brought different strengths to the debate stage, Clinton, he felt, had the edge.
“Clinton seems to be staying on topic for the most part,” he said. “Trump has managed to stay away from the personal attacks while getting as much policy in as he can, but Clinton has been doing a good job so far of not letting her emotions boil over.”
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