Hillary Clinton rallies for support at Hartnell College in Salinas

UPDATE 05/25/2016 9:15PM: A big day for democratic voters in Salinas as presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton spoke to a hundreds of supporters at Hartnell College. She was nearly an hour late to her rally on Wednesday but supporters didn’t seem to care. They wanted the chance to see the person they believe is best to run our country.

More pictures from Clinton’s rally

Congressional candidate Jimmy Panetta introduced Clinton to the crowd, calling her a force to be reckoned with.

Standing before hundreds of supporters, she explaining why she feels he would be the best man to represent California on Capitol Hill. She also talked about working with his father, when Leon Panetta was both the CIA director and secretary of defense.

Protestors also made their presence known outside Clinton’s rally. Three people were escorted out of the rally, one by Salinas Police Chief Kelly McMillin. For more on that story click here.

Shifting gears, she moved to some hot button topics like the economy and immigration, saying the country is stronger embracing immigrants and building bridges, not building walls. It played to a lot of voters, especially those on the Central Coast.

“I want you, especially here in Salinas, to hear this, because when Donald Trump talks about deporting, forcibly deporting 11 million immigrants, he’s not only talking about ripping families apart, is he? He’s talking about deporting one half, 2.4 million farm workers who help feed our country,” Clinton said.

Clinton said it was important to unify the country, not divide it. But not everyone was sold. Bernie Sanders supporter Johnny Khuu from Hayward drove to Salinas to see her speech. He felt that she didn’t persuade him to vote for her.

“She didn’t move me at all because she didn’t address the issue that I feel Bernie supporters will care about, which is money and politics,” Khuu said. “Not once was it mentioned in her speech and to me it sounded like a lot of platitude, “Oh we’re going to make America great, we’re going to fight for the American dream.” I feel the only good thing about her speech was her rhetoric against Trump but outside of that, it didn’t really inspire me.”

While Clinton avoided bringing up Sanders, she did zero in on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, attacking his views on immigration.

“Rounding up the farm workers in the fields, taking people off construction jobs, separating parents from their children, is that the kind of country we are?” Clinton asked. “I don’t think so, my friends.”

One Clinton supporter can’t even vote but was the first in line to see her.

Nearly 13-year-old Ayden Mackenzie of Capitola arrived at the Auxiliary Gym at 7 a.m. Wednesday. He said he became fascinated with politics after taking a humanities course and found Clinton was the candidate for him.

“Ever since Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her presidency back in 2015, I’ve been watching her at the debates and I’ve been watching her in the primary process and I think it’s just remarkable this female presidential hopeful (sic) is standing up for LGBT rights, for Latino rights, for African American rights and for everyone that’s less than, even people that have what they need,” Mackenzie said. “It’s just so great to see someone like this trying to run our country and I really think she deserves it. So I’ve just been supporting her and watching her, watching all the debates and doing everything I can to stay connected with her.”

While he can’t vote, he says he has persuaded his parents to vote for Clinton.

Of course she also encouraged people to vote on June 7. At this point, it looks like California’s primary will decide who has enough delegates to secure the nomination.

“It’s extremely important for Latino voters to come out and vote,” one Clinton supporter said. “It’s the one way we have of exercising our rights and making sure the candidates respond to us and our will. It’s the most important thing, I can’t emphasize it more strongly. And it’s really important for the Latino community because Hillary has a voting record in support of women and children, and that is like, primary for the Latino community. There’s so many young mothers and so many women and so many children that are coming up through the generations and she has fought for programs that benefit women and children specifically.”

Clinton did not meet with local reporters after the rally. The rally was held hours after a State Department Inspector General report found Clinton did not comply with email policies. According to CBS News, it wasn’t just Clinton who didn’t follow the rules, but previous secretaries of state were found to poorly manage email and other computer information.

PREVIOUS STORY: The stage is set at Hartnell College in anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s rally on Wednesday. Doors opened at the Auxiliary Gym at noon.

Clinton arrived at the Salinas Municipal Airport at about 2:15 p.m., just after the press following her campaign landed at about 1:30 p.m.

KION’s Mariana Hicks and Maya Holmes will be reporting on several angles, as Clinton tries to drum up support for her bid to the White House.