Sen. Elizabeth Warren Draws Big Crowd In First Campaign Visit To San Diego

Speaker 1: 00:00 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren held a town hall at waterfront park in downtown San Diego last night, KPBS Metro reporter Andrew Bowen says the Massachusetts Senator brought her message of big structural change to a crowd of some 8,500 people. [inaudible] Warren comes to San Diego as she's experiencing a notable rise in the national polls and just this week, a poll of California voters founder in first place just barely ahead of former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders in the race for the democratic nomination. She also picked up a San Diego endorsement Thursday. Speaker 2: 00:38 Today, Elizabeth Warren laid out the best labor worker plan I've ever seen in my entire life because of course she has a plan for that Speaker 1: 00:48 state assembly member Lorena Gonzalez, who gave Warren's introduction or in started her speech with a familiar story about her childhood when her father suffered a heart attack and her mother was forced to start working outside the home and that minimum wage job saved our house and saved our family. Oren gave a brief history of her life, young mother, special education teacher, law professor. She said she was drawn to the question of why America's middle class is being hollowed out. Her answer, the government is working great for drug companies, but not those just trying to fill a prescription. It works great for oil companies, but not for those who feel the threat of climate change. Speaker 2: 01:29 And when you see a government that works great for those with big money and isn't working so well for everyone else, that is corruption, pure and simple, and we need to [inaudible] Speaker 1: 01:46 call it out for what it is. Rob shut. Warren speech didn't even mention the biggest news in recent weeks. The impeachment inquiry into president Trump. She only spoke about Trump in response to a question an audience member said the president had divided the country and asked how she would bring it back together. She said with her ideas, including a new wealth tax on people who have more than $50 million, not just the majority of Democrats like it, not just the majority of independence like it, but the majority of Republicans like it. Speaker 2: 02:22 And that's why we are going to win. It's why we're going to make change. And it's how we're going to start bringing this stuff. Speaker 1: 02:29 He shouldn't back together. After Warren finished, Leon of Carlsbad said he's not ready to commit to voting for the Senator, but he said he's impressed by the specificity of her plans and her experience taking on big corporations and also the ability to kind of connect for bottom to top. I mean she basically, like she said today in her speech, she wanted to be a special ed teacher. She had the opportunity to go beyond that and eventually Rose up to Senate and now he's running for president. So that to me is the American story. Christine Lopez of LA Mesa, a full blown war in supporters. She says she likes how the senators speaks from the heart. Speaker 3: 03:04 She has this energy that is just really contagious I think. So it was really great to hear her kind of go through her plans and just the way that she told her story and kind of wove her story into that was it was just really, I felt like I was witnessing something special Speaker 1: 03:23 like she does after every campaign event. Warren took time to pose with anyone who wanted to take a selfie with her. She also answered a few questions from reporters when asked what she would do to address the homelessness and high housing costs that plague San Diego. She answered with one of her campaign slogans. I got to plan for that. So I have a housing plan that would build about 3.2 million new housing units and it would help provide housing for middle class families for working class families. We need a bigger housing supply in America, and we can do that by making a real federal investment. And yes, I have it paid for. We're in, probably won't be the last democratic presidential candidate to make a stop in San Diego with the state's early primary on March 3rd candidates are paying much closer attention to golden state voters than in previous elections. Andrew Bowen KPBS news Speaker 4: 04:27 [inaudible].