Bubba Sways Berner

Just 22 hours after hearing Bernie Sanders thunder away on the New Haven Green and deciding she was officially feeling the Bern, Eryn Ifill was in no mood to hear former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, Giffords’ husband Mark Kelly, and former U.S. President Bill Clinton speak at Wilbur Cross High School’s gym on the eve of Tuesday’s primary.

Her mom, Megan Ifill of the New Haven Youth Coalition, told her they could stop beforehand for Archie Moore​‘s chocolate pie.

Mom wanted to attend the rally to see Giffords, who has spent years recovering from a shooting in Tuscon; She felt like ​“we were watching something historic.” Eryn agreed to come along — for the confection.

But the 16-year-old high school junior (she didn’t want to identify the school) later emerged from the rally with an altered sense of who should win today’s primary.

Around 200 people showed up for Monday evening’s event, organized by the Clinton campaign with a focus on gun control. New Haven Mayor Toni Harp and Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker spoke before welcoming Giffords and Kelly to the stage.

Eryn listened to former President Clinton speak passionately about why his wife Hillary Clinton should become the next president. He spoke about her long experience in politics, from her time as a student at Yale Law School to her time as a U.S. senator to her service as U.S. secretary of state.

Eryn said she was swayed by Bill’s insistence that Hillary — and not Sanders — was uniquely equipped to lead the country on issues like gun reform, immigration, health care, job creation, and raising the minimum wage, all while reaching across a partisan divide. 

That got the young Sanderista’s attention right away. ​“Personally, I don’t care if you’re Democrat or Republican. Just get the job done,” she said.

She’d gone into Cross thinking that Bernie was the guy to do it. Now, she wasn’t sure.

“I was feeling the Bern completely, because a lot of the staff and students at my school are saying that Hillary should be locked up. They’re feeling the Bern. The staff too. They say that she shouldn’t be hiding stuff. But then to hear what Bill said, and to have record to see what she’s done, that she can get the job done, is just … so conflicting.”

A big part of that was Bill Clinton’s discussion of his wife’s vow to challenge to the gun lobby in Washington, on which Sanders has staked a more nuanced position including opposing a bill to strip gun manufacturers from legal liability from deaths caused by their product.

Bill Clinton began his down-to-the-wire pitch with that issue, for which Hillary has been an outspoken advocate. He cited Giffords and Kelly as victims of an attack that could have been prevented, before maintaining that only Hillary could stop the gun lobby and increasingly powerful National Rifle Association NRA in their tracks.

“Congresswomen Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly … they symbolize so much to me,” he said. ​“When Gabby Giffords was shot and then by infinite grace survived, their marriage was strengthened, not weakened, by the burdens of her rehabilitation. She had an aide who survived, who became a member of Congress. And she just decided to keep on serving. She decided if we were ever going to have any sensible gun safety laws in this country, so there wouldn’t be more Newtowns, there wouldn’t be more Charlestons, there wouldn’t be all these kids now, every single day, in some major city … being gunned down with the rise of gun violence tied to this heroin and drug epidemic.”

“This debate does not make any sense,” he added. ​“People’s lives are at stake.”

Paired with Kelly’s own remarks — that, even as a gun owner himself, he wants to see comprehensive gun reform, and ​“there is only one candidate who has the record to stand up to the gun lobby” — Clinton’s argument stuck with Eryn.

“When he [Bill] said he [Sanders] rejected that gun law [the Brady Bill] four times, I was like: excuse me?” she said. ​“I was like: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no — that can’t be true.”

But it was true, and it made her second guess the power she wanted in office. ​“It’s conflicting,” she said.

Separated By Belief

Clinton’s insistence that ​“we’re all too siloed,” and that Hillary was the candidate most likely to move through political gridlock and foreign policy hurdles with grace, also struck Eryn and her mom.

“The only remaining bigotry Americans have is we don’t want to listen to anyone who disagrees with us,” Clinton said. ​“If you want to restore inclusive economics, more jobs, higher income, less inequality, future orientation, if you want to basically create an inclusive society — an education that does not depend on your zip code, then free college for everybody, manageable debt, finishing the work of insuring 100 percent of our people and getting the price of prescription drugs down and fixing the holes in the current healthcare program … if you wanna do that, if you think it’s a good idea for America to race ahead of China, Germany and all the other competitors to lead the world away from climate change … if you want to bring manufacturing back … if you want these things, then you have to tear down the barriers. The barriers are what don’t allow us to get out of our silos.”

“Hillary says: if you elect me, I will find a way, whatever it is, to get as much done as can possibly be done, and I always have.’”

That struck Megan Ifill as the best approach.

“Bill hit on something that is definitely in my philosophy, which is: Have a first-hand informed meeting with people that are running,” she said. ​“I have gone to Democratic rallies. I go to Republican rallies … It takes Republicans and Democrats, and legislators tell you that. It’s a compromise. People, like he said, are unwilling to hear others out. It’s good to be impartial, not undecided.”

Eryn, reflecting on her own hope for a president who can get things accomplished, said she would have to think harder about the candidates before hitting the boots. Luckily, she has some time to think about it. 

“I would still vote if I could,” she said, adding that she’d probably talk it out with her mom and brother Mark. ​“But thank God I’m not 18 yet.”