Luis Carlos Lopez

El Paso Times

With the primaries looming, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and former Colorado U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar visited El Paso over the weekend to encourage people to cast a vote for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

“What Hillary has shown time and again is that she is able to bring Democrats and Republicans together. The country need to solve problems and it order to solve problems it needs unity,” Salazar said Saturday. “I think that when you look at her history, she’s been doing that all her life.”

Salazar’s visit came on the day that Clinton crushed party rival Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina primary.

Salazar, 60, culminated his role as secretary of the interior in April 2013. On Saturday, he joined volunteers and union workers for what Clinton campaign organizers described as a “day of grass-roots organizing.”

Salazar met with Precinct 56 Chairwoman Yolanda Clay before meeting with Service Employees International Union members and health care workers.

“We believe, in the campaign, that Texas is very important and El Paso is one of the key population centers that is an important one,” Salazar said.

Salazar also spent Saturday morning meeting potential voters at their homes and walking through El Paso neighborhoods with Clinton volunteers, helping them deliver literature and encouraging voter turnout.

“She is well positioned to win, and the reality is that she is the most qualified of any person running to be president of the United States on both the Democratic side and the Republican side,” Salazar said.

The former Colorado attorney general said Texas and its delegates can provide Clinton a significant boost. He said that Clinton has made better strides than Sanders in connecting with Hispanics.

“The Latino community in places like El Paso is important. She has a strong record of having been on our side. I watched that up close and personal through my years of working with her and so we need to get the message out,” Salazar said.

He added that Clinton’s ability to work with members from both parties is particularly important when pushing for issues that are important to El Paso and the region — particularly immigration.

“Of anybody running for president, Hillary Clinton will be able to get us a solution on immigration reform that brings the undocumented workers out of the shadows and into the sunlight. She’ll be able to create the kind of relationship, which is a north (and) south relationship between the United States and Latin America, that will be very good for the people of El Paso,” Salazar said.

“What I see in the divisiveness and the rhetoric coming from the Republican Party is they would exclude lots of communities and they would turn back the clock on the civil rights that we have fought for for so long, and that’s why this is such an important election and that’s why I’m focused on Hillary,” he added.

Luis Carlos Lopez may be reached at 546-6381; llopez@elpasotimes.com; @lclopez4 on Twitter.