Clinton’s latest visit to Southern California marks a return to the state where she secured enough commitments from superdelegates and enough pledged delegates to become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
The campaign said the town hall allowed participants to “engage in a conversation and ask Clinton questions important to their communities and online audiences.”
The former secretary of state, who leads her likely Republican challenger Donald Trump in most polls, has been running a general election campaign for several weeks despite being dogged by Sen. Bernie Sanders, who saw his hopes of becoming the Democratic nominee dashed when California and New Jersey handed Clinton convincing wins in their primary elections on June 7.
Clinton’s technology initiative -- which is part of her overall economic vision -- lays out five key goals, according to a campaign release.
They include allowing entrepreneurs to defer federal student loans for up to three years, connecting every household to high-speed internet by 2020 and providing every student in America access to computer science education by the time they graduate, including a plan to train 50,000 new computer science education teachers in the next decade.
Clinton is also set to hold two fundraisers in the Los Angeles-area, including one at the home of Napster co-founder Sean Parker. Tickets are $2,700 per person, the maximum individual contribution under federal law for a candidate seeking his or her party’s presidential nomination or for the general election.
Jack Pitney, political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said the one-two punch of pushing technology and raising money was strategically smart on Clinton’s part as she looks to continue to coalesce support within the Democratic party.
“It’s a no-lose situation for her,” Pitney explained. “It appeals to the young, tech-savvy Bernie Sanders supporter, but Silicon Valley is a major source of campaign contributions.”
The second event is a reception and dinner at the home of investor-philanthropist Marc Nathanson, founder of Falcon Cable, with prices ranging from $33,400 per couple to $100,000 per couple.
Clinton’s arrival comes on the same day that House Republicans released a report about the 2012 Benghazi attack that killed four Americans while she was secretary of state.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus issued a statement after the report’s release that blasted her department’s “systemic security failures” that left the diplomatic post vulnerable to attack.
©2016 the Daily News (Los Angeles) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.