Presidential candidates are making a big push to win Ohio and its large share of delegates. That includes Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders who talked one-on-one with Statehouse correspondent Andy Chow.
Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders faces a tough battle in Ohio. His rival Hillary Clinton surging in the delegate count, and polls show she could win the Ohio Democratic primary again, as she did in 2008.
But Sanders says his strategy to crackdown on trade deals that send jobs out of the country will resonate with Ohio voters.
“When you see factories shut down, communities decimated. You see people who used to make middle class wages now working at McDonald’s or Burger King for starvation wages -- yeah I do believe that will impact the people,” says Sanders.
One way to create 13 million new, high-paying jobs, according to Sanders, is to rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure.
Sanders and Clinton are also locked in a heated debate over where they stood on the auto industry bailout in 2008.
What About The Auto Bailout?
The auto industry bailout played a pretty big role in the 2012 presidential and U.S. Senate race in Ohio.
Now Clinton accuses Sanders of not voting for the bailout in 2008. Sanders say he voted against a larger bailout that did help the auto industry but was primarily crafted to help big banks.
The question to Sanders: “The devil’s advocate could say ‘well it seems like you were more against throwing money to Wall Street than adding money industry,’ what would you tell them?”
“No, no that’s not the case," says Sanders.
"If you look at the record what the bailout was about was in fact bailing out Wall Street, there was very little discussion in that, at that point, about the automobile industry.”
Sanders adds that he did vote for a separate bailout that focused only on the auto industry.
Coming Down on Fracking
The latest numbers show that drilling companies continue to pump even more natural gas out of Ohio’s shale year-by-year. But Sanders says fracking needs to stop.
Democrats and environmental groups have been fighting the increased use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of natural gas for years.
Sanders is among those calling for an all-out ban. Asked what that would mean for the many jobs fracking has created in Ohio:
“You wanna talk about jobs, we can create millions of jobs by creating a sustainable energy system which is not polluting the environment and that’s what I intend to do,” says Sanders.
Clinton has laid out stiff regulations that would make it difficult to frack in the U.S. but would not ban it.
