From Harris to Hoover, There’s a Long History of Campaigning in E.C.
Tom Giffey, video by Ma Vue |
By the time you read this, the 2024 presidential campaign will have already come to Eau Claire. If history is any indication, it will be back.
Vice President Kamala Harris was scheduled to hold a rally in Eau Claire on Aug. 7, a couple of days after this edition went to press, so if all went as planned by now your social media feed was full of pictures of Harris and her new running mate, plus Bon Iver serenading the crowd. (To be clear: We’re pretty sure Justin Vernon won’t be her running mate, though it wouldn’t be a bad choice to lock up the Valley’s vote.)
But, as I said, this likely won’t be the last time the presidential campaign rolls through before Election Day. The reason is that Eau Claire is the biggest city in a swing area in a swing state in a particularly swingy election season. What better way to pump up potential voters than a little electoral TLC?
Consider this: On one memorable weekend in April 2016, Eau Claire was visited by four (yes, count ’em) presidential hopefuls: Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump. In 2012, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton came to town on behalf of Barack Obama, who himself visited Eau Claire a couple of times in 2008. Four years before that, George W. Bush and John Kerry stumped here.
The list also includes John F. Kennedy, who criss-crossed the state in 1960 (Eau Claire author B.J. Hollars recently wrote a book about that campaign). As far back as 1932, Herbert Hoover spoke a few words from the back of a train to a crowd in Eau Claire – a crowd that reportedly numbered as large as 15,000, or more than half the city’s population! If Harris’s crowd was anywhere near that big, it probably meant her running mate is a different musical star – probably Taylor Swift.
