JACKSONVILLE — Former NBA star Grant Hill was at Edward Waters College on Monday to campaign for Hillary Clinton and encourage students to register to vote.
“I know that Hillary Clinton, as president, is going to have a seat at the table for everybody regardless of race, regardless of religion, of gender, of sexual orientation,” Hill said.
While at Edward Waters, Hill shared a story about Clinton’s influence on his mother while the two women were classmates at Wellesley College, and why it’s important for the students to vote.
“The last presidential election, of all the states that were battleground states, Florida was the closest one, and we expect the same thing to occur in this election,” he said.
Republican candidate Donald Trump had his own celebrity in Jacksonville over the weekend. Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain appeared at the grand opening of Trump’s westside campaign headquarters.
These visits to the First Coast come just before the first televised presidential debate between Clinton and Trump, starting at 9 p.m. Monday.
Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are not included in the first debate.
Real Clear Politics aggregate polls show the race is almost even nationally with Clinton ahead of Trump by 1.5 percent. Johnson and Stein have 7.2 and 2.3 percent of the polls, respectively.
The same polls show Trump with a.1 percent lead over Clinton in Florida.
Unregistered Florida voters have just 15 days to register before the Oct. 11 deadline. Early voting begins in Florida on Oct. 29.
The 2016 presidential election is Nov. 8.
News Intern Andre Roman can be reached at newsteam@wjct.org or on Twitter @adromanify
News Intern Blake Allen can be reached at newsteam@wjct.org or on Twitter @BAllenMMJ
