ATHENS, Ohio — Hillary Clinton today said she's under no illusion that Republican-friendly southeast Ohio will vote for her Nov. 8, but she said she visited the area anyway to make the case that Appalachia would not be overlooked by a Clinton presidency.

“In the broader region, this isn't one where a lot of Democrats running for president tend to win a lot of votes these days,” she said. “And I know there are people in this region — I met with some of them yesterday — who find it hard to think about voting for any Democrat and for me in particular.

“I will keep trying to convince people otherwise, but that's not what this trip is about,” the former secretary of state, New York senator, and first lady told about 300 packed inside the brewery portion of Jackie O’s Production Brewery and Tap Room in Athens, plus many more lined up in the parking lot who couldn't get in.

“I believe that our best years can still be ahead of us,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I'm absolutely sure of that.”

She took a detour to the critical battleground state despite having already sewn up Ohio’s primary and the majority of its delegates on March 15.

She was in the neighborhood, talking with steelworkers and coal miners Monday in West Virginia, which votes on May 10, and Kentucky, where Democrats vote a week later. Earlier Tuesday she talked about opiate addiction at the University of Charleston in West Virginia.

Neither West Virginia nor Kentucky has backed a Democrat for the White House since Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996.

She admitted she chose to campaign in the region to do some damage control, to explain her comment during a televised Columbus town hall in March that government policies will “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

It overshadowed her message of providing $30 million to help those displaced by the economic shift.

She said she “misspoke.”

“One reason I took this trip was to say that directly to the people who are affected,” she said.

But she did not apologize for her support for policies that reduce carbon emissions and promote cleaner energy technologies. She took note that Jackie O's recently installed solar panels that should provide more than half of its brewing business’s energy.

“Coal is still part of our energy supply, although it produces far less of our electricity than it once did,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Even China is starting to burn less coal. That's good tor the planet, but it has hurt American coal exports from this region.

“No matter what some politicians tell you, these trends are here to stay...” she said. “We're not going to go back to an energy system that looks like it did in the 20th century.”

She called for programs to encourage new technologies and industries to come to the region and employ those who once worked in the coal and steel industries. She called for greater investment in job training, a free community college education, and cracking down on coal companies that fail to honor their responsibilities to workers and retirees.

Athens County, home of Ohio University, is a Democratic stronghold that President Obama carried in 2012, but Mrs. Clinton lost here to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in Ohio's 2016 primary.

Like West Virginia and Kentucky, much of southeast Ohio is coal country where signs in 2012 declared that Mr. Obama was waging a “War on Coal” with his environmental and energy policies.

Ohio’s biggest coal-producing counties — Belmont, Harrison, Jefferson, Tuscawaras, Perry, and Meigs — all sided with Republican Mitt Romney in 2012 while Ohio as a whole helped keep Mr. Obama in the White House.

In addition to counting on a big turnout in northeast Ohio, she has started working early to siphon off votes in Ohio’s largely rural, Republican-friendly southeast, where her environmental, energy, gun, and trade policies may have more trouble resonating.

It’s a message Republican front-runner Donald Trump has been happy to run with, blasting the Obama administration's new carbon-emissions regulations.

Christian Palich, president of the Ohio Coal Association, joined roughly 35 coal miners and Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges nearby to protest Mrs. Clinton’s visit. Mr. Palich said Ohio miners do not accept her apology that she spoke out of context, and are not looking for a bailout.

“It’s very clear with her words that she will be putting coal miners and coal businesses out of business,” he said. “She can always claim that she misspoke. But with a mistake about killing jobs, a way of life, and a fuel that provides 70 percent of Ohio’s electricity, can coal families trust her?”

Mr. Palich expects that a Hillary Clinton administration would continue Obama policies to reduce carbon emissions, which have threatened coal-fired power plants, and promote cleaner sources of power. He said the industry lost 30,000 jobs nationally over the last eight years — thousands of those in Ohio

“We still provide 70 percent of Ohio’s electricity and produce 20 million tons a year,” he said. “Our guys are hoping that a strong new administration will put them back to work.”

Mrs. Clinton is just about 200 delegates shy of the 2,382 needed to lock up the Democratic nomination over Senator Sanders in advance of the July convention in Philadelphia.

Mrs. Clinton made no mention of Ohio Gov. John Kasich while on his home turf.

Mr. Kasich spent a short time away from the campaign trail, having ceded Indiana to Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz. He is waiting to see whether Mr. Cruz can block the New York billionaire’s path to the 1,237 delegates needed to lock up the GOP nomination before the Cleveland convention in July.

First Published May 3, 2016, 8:25 p.m.