Clinton in Columbus: Would love to debate Trump

COLUMBUS – "When my husband ran for president, and Ohio was so good to him …"

The lines were delivered in Columbus on Thursday, instead of Cincinnati, but the message was the same.

Hillary Rodham Clinton painted herself as a "moderate" – "I plead guilty," she said – who would fight for women's priorities. She hopes to engage the crowd of possible women volunteers when the 2016 election comes to perennial-swing-state Ohio.

"You try to work together to figure out how to get something done," she said, targeting her purple-state audience.

The mantle of a moderate, Ohio-winner also belongs to a candidate on the GOP side: Gov. John Kasich, who is polling in second place in New Hampshire, site of the nation's first primary. But Clinton didn't make any overt references to Kasich during her speech.

Clinton, making her second presidential bid after serving as U.S. secretary of state, is facing an increasingly stiff primary challenge as the controversy over her private email server rages on. In a shift in tone, Clinton apologized this week for using the server, in an interview aired Tuesday on ABC News.

Shades of Clinton's primary battle featured in her remarks Thursday to prospective Columbus volunteers, as she briefly took a populist tone.

"We're going to make the rich pay their fair share, and they're going to have to contribute to making this country work again for everybody," Clinton said, amid growing Democratic enthusiasm for socialist Bernie Sanders and possible candidate Joe Biden.

Clinton had originally planned to hold the women's organizing event in Cincinnati, but last week announced a change in plans. She still plans to attend a Cincinnati-area fundraiser while she's in Ohio.

Several hundred people gathered in front of her stage in a Downtown Columbus ballroom, but the room could have fit hundreds more to the side of the stage and in the balcony. A handful of demonstrators – supporters of Bernie Sanders, along with opponents of abortion rights – gathered outside.

Clinton mentioned only one other candidate specifically, although not by name:

"There's one particular candidate who just seems to delight in insulting women every chance he gets," she said, referencing billionaire Donald Trump, who leads GOP polls. "If he emerges, I would love to debate him."

Clinton hailed her husband, former President Bill Clinton, for presiding over a balanced federal budget. That's an achievement Kasich takes major credit for, since he chaired the House Budget Committee during the late 1990s. But Clinton didn't reference Kasich overtly.

Still, his campaign used the opportunity to send out a fundraising email, touting Kasich's strong polling numbers in Ohio.

"She knows she can't win the White House without winning Ohio – and she can't win Ohio against Gov. John Kasich," said John Weaver, Kasich's national campaign strategist, in the fundraising email.

Later Thursday, Clinton attended an East Walnut Hills fundraiser hosted by Jennie Berliant and her husband, Allan, the CEO of Hyde Park's Best Express Foods and former member of the national finance committee for President Barack Obama's campaign. Attending the fundraiser cost $2,700 per person, the maximum per-person donation for the primary cycle, according to an invitation viewed by The Enquirer.