Clinton Targets White Male Voters in Key Swing States

Hillary Clinton's first general election road trip through Pennsylvania and Ohio is making a concerted effort to chip away at the nearly two-to-one support white male voters have shown for rival Donald Trump, The New York Times reports.

"Donald Trump needs to prevail in the very regions we crisscrossed this weekend," Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon tells the Times. "As this bus trip shows, we are not conceding a single county, a single town or a single voter to him."

The Times notes the Democratic presidential nominee traveled with her "two top ambassadors to white men" – former President Bill Clinton and running mate Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.

But the candidate herself is making the pivot as well, talking in Pennsylvania about her father and brother playing football at Penn State, sidelining a rotation of female pop stars in favor of music that includes Motown and Hall and Oates classics, and touting hot peppers as a favorite dish, the Times reports.

According to the Times, there are visible cracks in the white-male wall of opposition to Clinton: one voter in Ohio had a sign declaring: "I am male, white, over 40, Southern Baptist pastor. And I’m with her."

But holdouts abound.

"Stop fibbing," retired carpenter Ted Schaible told the Times when it asked at a toy factory in Pennsylvania what could persuade him to vote for Clinton. "It costs a lot of money to track down those fibs."

According to the Times, Clinton allies believe surrogates like Kaine, former President Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden could help the nominee make her case to wary audiences in the all-important Rust Belt states.

Related Stories:

• WSJ: Clinton to Take on Nebraska, North Carolina
• Trump Campaign Will Focus on Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania