Chelsea Clinton campaigns for 'mom' during IU visit

In the drawn-out and sometimes dirty Democratic primary, the candidates have often been reduced to one name and a list of campaign policies. Sen. Hillary Clinton has been called just “Clinton” or sometimes “Hillary” or sometimes even a gender-based derogatory swear. But Monday night in the foyer of the IU Auditorium, she was “mom.”\nChelsea Clinton stumped for her mother in front of a curious crowd and made an impassioned case for why IU students should vote for the New York senator in Indiana’s May 6 primary.\n“I’d like to start out by admitting that I will always be for my mom and I think everyone should vote for her,” she said. “So in that way, I am biased.”\nThroughout her hour-and-a-half long speech, Chelsea Clinton fielded questions about her mother’s policies on a variety of student-oriented political issues from college affordability to the Iraq War. In her answers, she always pointedly referred to the sometimes embattled Hillary Clinton only as “mom.” \nChelsea Clinton, who was flanked by actor Sean Astin, of “Rudy,” “The Goonies” and “The Lord of the Rings,” spent much of her time addressing her mother’s plan to reduce the cost of college education. Her platform includes providing more low-interest federal student loans, giving tax credits to college students, eliminating the paperwork required to apply for federal financial aid and doubling the maximum Pell Grant allotment to more than $10,000 per student per year.\nHillary Clinton trails her opponent, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, with 1,498 pledged delegates to Obama’s 1,617, according to The Associated Press. It takes 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination. \nAfter Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary, Indiana will be one of the last major states to have its say in the Democratic nomination process. Both campaigns already have a presence here and have promised to fight hard for Indiana’s 84 delegates. This is shaping up to be the the first time Indiana has had a voice in the presidential primary in some 40 years. \nBoth Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton made separate, three-city stops in Indiana last week and are scheduled to return to the Hoosier state again this week. \nChelsea Clinton said she was particularly inspired by her mother’s famous 1995 speech in Beijing in which she declared, “women’s rights are human rights.”\nA common theme in Chelsea Clinton’s speech was what she called the “small tragedies” of the George W. Bush presidency – seldom-publicized funding cuts in programs such as AmeriCorps and other initiatives that she said help disadvantaged people across the country and throughout the world. \nAstin, who said he’s been an avid Hillary Clinton supporter since he met her in 1992, said he hopes his fame can bring another “blip” of interest to her campaign.\n“In Indiana I am valuable to the Clinton campaign because I played Rudy,” he said in an interview with the Indiana Daily Student.\nSophomore and president of the IU Students for Hillary Clinton AnnElyse Gibbons said she hopes Chelsea Clinton’s appearance will jump-start interest in the Clinton campaigns on campus. \nMany of the IU students who showed up at the rally said they were not Hillary Clinton supporters but were interested to hear what the former first daughter had to say. \nSophomore John McLaughlin, who is a tentative Obama supporter, said he liked the way Chelsea Clinton worked to humanize her mother. Her words didn’t entirely win his vote, but “she made it a lot harder choice to make,” he said.