“I want so much to convey to you that I will be on your side,” Clinton told the crowd, which included some stragglers who came after the Cleveland Browns game nearby. “I will fight for you. I love our country and I believe in our people and I will never, ever quit on you, no matter what.”
James, meanwhile, pressed the crowd to vote.
“I was one of those kids, I was growing up in a community that was like, ‘our vote doesn’t matter.’” James said. “But it really does. It really, really does.”
He appeared with fellow Cavalier J.R. Smith, whose appearance was not announced before the event.
James did not mention Trump at the event, but Clinton, did, calling the election “a real choice between division and unity” as well as “strong steady leadership or a loose cannon.”
“Anger is not a plan,” she said, referring to Trump.
She spoke just an hour after Comey announced that there would be no charges related to an investigation of whether Clinton disclosed classified information on emails.
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said the investigation had been a “distraction” by the Trump campaign. “There was no wrongdoing,” he said.
“Leave her alone,” said Lisa Muglich, an Amherst teacher at the rally. She called the news that Comey wasn’t pressing charges “fantastic.”
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said that despite deciding not to file charges, “the FBI’s findings from its criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s secret email server were a damning and unprecedented indictment of her judgment.”
“None of this changes the fact that the FBI continues to investigate the Clinton Foundation for corruption involving her tenure as secretary of state. Hillary Clinton should never be president,” he said.
Cleveland – and northern Ohio – are expected to be a stronghold for Clinton in Ohio; of the 17 counties President Barack Obama won in 2012, 13 were north of Columbus. While he received 50.1 percent of the vote in Ohio that year, he won nearly 69 percent of the vote in Cuyahoga County.
Clinton knows this: Her appearance in Cleveland Sunday was the second in two days; on Friday night, she appeared at a free concert just 1.2 miles away at Cleveland State University headlined by Jay Z and Beyonce.
On Monday, Trump has scheduled events in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan. Clinton is set to appear in Michigan and North Carolina, closing out the campaign Monday night with a rally in Philadelphia with Bill and Chelsea Clinton, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi.
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