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FLINT, MI – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign said she will leave New Hampshire Sunday to make a campaign stop in Flint, where she will call for $600 million in federal aid to help the city recover from a water crisis and public health catastrophe that has spiraled into a major political issue.
Clinton has been relentlessly critical of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s handling of the crisis, and her rival for the Democratic nomination, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has called on Snyder to resign over “his administration’s failure to deal with the lead-poisoning that has sickened thousands of children in Flint.”
Sanders and Clinton will debate in Flint on March 6, two days before the Michigan presidential primary on March 8.
Clinton has little to lose by leaving New Hampshire — where she has anemic poll numbers — two days before that state’s primary election.
Sanders is 21.5 points ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire, according to a Real Clear Politics average. Nationally, Clinton leads Sanders, 50.5 percent to 37.2 percent, according to the average. Clinton barely squeaked past Sanders in Monday’s Iowa Caucuses, the first-in-the-nation test of presidential strength.
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Ronna Romney McDaniel was quick to denounce Clinton’s visit, saying in a statement that the candidate’s “ ‘break’ from her campaign would seem sincerer had she done it when she first started mentioning it” and not when her poll numbers began to lag.
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McDaniel also accused the former secretary of state and first lady of politicizing the crisis and said a visit by a presidential candidate with a Secret Service detail strains resources in a city still dealing with a financial emergency.
Flint switched its water from Lake Huron to the Flint River in 2014 while under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager. The corrosive water from the river caused lead in aging pipes to leach, exposing an unknown number of children to dangerous levels of lead that could cause irreversible brain damage.
Snyder has admitted that mistakes were made in the handling of the catastrophe in Flint, and that the state’s Department of Environmental Quality didn’t implement measures to treat the Flint River water’s corrosive properties, despite assurances in an email that it had.
The governor was meeting Friday with a multi-agency task force created to address the crisis, and he is expected tounveil a long-term aid package for Flint in his budget presentation next week, The Detroit News said.
» Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr / Creative Commons