BANGOR, Maine — With less than a week to go before Maine’s Democratic caucuses, two-time Olympic figure skating medalist Michelle Kwan stopped by Hillary Clinton’s Bangor campaign office on Broad Street on Tuesday to energize supporters.
About 50 Clinton supporters were on hand to greet Kwan, who is surrogate outreach coordinator for the Hillary for America campaign and who served as Clinton’s senior advisor for public diplomacy and public affairs and the first public diplomacy envoy for the U.S. State Department.
“I’m so glad to be here in Maine. It’s such an important time to be here,” Kwan said upon arriving from an unannounced visit to the University of Maine campus in Orono, where she met with students.
During her Bangor stop, Kwan spoke about why she is supporting Clinton’s presidential bid.
“It was such an honor to see firsthand the vision and the leadership. There’s nobody more qualified [than] Hillary Clinton,” Kwan said, citing Clinton’s experience in foreign and domestic policy as a U.S. senator, first lady and secretary of state.
“That’s the person I want in the White House,” said Kwan, who won the silver medal in the 1998 Winter Olympics and took bronze in the 2002 games. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she is a five-time world figure skating champion.
“When I think about what’s at stake [in the 2016 presidential election], I think of my parents and how they immigrated to the United States so they could provide more opportunity and build a better life in this amazing country,” she said. “As my dad would say, he had nothing in his pocket but a seed of hope. And that’s why hope sometimes gets you a long way if you work hard, dream big. It’s the American dream, right?”
Electing Clinton, she said, will “ensure that the next generation of Americans have that ability to dream that dream.”
Kwan also noted that Clinton has been a longtime proponent of equal rights for women, citing Clinton’s controversial September 1995 address at the Fourth World Conference on Women by the United Nations Development Programme in Beijing, in which she she famously stated: “Human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights.”
“Her whole entire adult life has been fighting for women, children, families,” Kwan told Clinton supporters.
“A lot of people don’t really know and this is your job to do, to let people know that when she graduated from Yale Law School, she could have had a very cushy, comfortable job,” she said. Instead, Kwan said, Clinton went to work for the Children’s Defense Fund, a leading nonprofit advocacy organization for children’s rights.
“I think she’s going to do really well. She has an incredible team, a lot of volunteers helping to knock on doors, make phone calls and get folks to volunteer — don’t forget to caucus on March 6,” she said.
Kwan also was slated to meet with Clinton supporters in Augusta and then Portland before flying to New York for her next appearances.