Meet One of Voters Who Cast Her Ballot for Hillary Clinton

— -- As a teenager in the summer of 1974, Betsy Davidson inherited her political ideology.

“Of course all I wanted to do at 15 was go to the beach all summer long,” she recalled. “And my grandmother and her sister spent the entire summer watching the Watergate hearings, not going to the beach. And my grandmother would be sitting on the phone sending telegrams to Washington, demanding that Richard Nixon resign!”

The fourth generation of a self-described “long line of Democratic women,” Davidson is carrying forth that mantle in the form of a bubbly and passionate force, constantly in motion and this year, on a mission to make Hillary Clinton the first female president of the U.S.

“It’s not the reason that I’m voting for Hillary Clinton,” insisted Davidson, editor at large for Edible Long Island. “I just believe that she is completely qualified and capable to start on Day One.”

Davidson, 57, was one of the nearly 16 million voters across the country who helped give Clinton the delegates she needed to clinch the Democratic party’s nomination. In April 2016, New York state primary voters like Davidson, a mother of three, pushed the former Secretary of State to a 16-point win over Sen. Bernie Sanders. To Davidson, now a resident of Huntington Bay, New York, Clinton is the only candidate she would trust with her family’s future.

Davidson’s three children, now grown, have all served or currently serve in the government or military. She flips through photos of the rare moments in which the family managed to reunite during those years of service. Smiling faces pressed together when her son, who works with the State Department was home from an overseas deployment. Proud arms wrapped around her daughter the day she graduated from the Coast Guard Academy. There is also a candid shot captured of her youngest, now a Navy helicopter pilot, in his dress whites.

“My kids are too old for this mom to be telling them to watch their back,” mused Davidson. “But the idea that another mom would have my kids’ back does make it a tiny – not totally – but a tiny bit easier to put my head on the pillow at night.”

National security ranks highest among her issues, but the rising cost of healthcare wormed its way onto Davidson’s list of chief concerns after a surprise diagnosis last year. In the Fall of 2015, after decades without major health concerns, Davidson says she was diagnosed with diabetes, “pretty much out of the blue.”

“Thanks to the Affordable Health Care Act, we have insurance. And I can get my insulin and my test strips and all the things I need,” she said. “In order to eat, I have to take insulin. Four times a day. It would add up pretty quickly. And I can’t afford it. I cannot afford it out of pocket.”

But Davidson’s support for the former Secretary of State is rooted in more than just immediate costs, and extends far beyond the generation that will succeed her. Now a grandmother to an increasingly-diverse family, Davidson weighs the world her grandsons -— one of whom is of Mexican descent, the other of whom has a Muslim mother -— will one day inherit.

“Donald Trump’s references to ethnic groups – in particular banning all non-American Muslims from coming into this country, building a wall with Mexico — those two things particularly resonate with me,” said Davidson. “You know, you hear tales of kids being taunted on the playground because of their name, because of their ethnic group – make my blood run cold. These are my grandchildren!”

Come November, Davidson says, her vote will carry not just the weight of her own, immediate circumstances, but will act as a foundation for the lives she hopes her own kids and grandchildren will lead.

“This grandmother just feels like she has to do whatever she can to protect her family,” she said.