At the Thursday opening of the Hillary for Ohio Toledo campaign office, Shelley Cavalieri pledged that her daughters — Lucia, who turns 1 on Sunday, and Aurelia, who is 3 — would shape their first memories of a president around Hillary Clinton, the first woman who might hold the office.

“At dinner the other night, Aurelia asked, ‘Is Hillary nice to kids?’” Ms. Cavalieri said. “I want my girls’ framework of leadership and patriotism to be shaped by a woman.”

Ms. Cavalieri was one of more than 100 people to cram into the storefront at 911 Jefferson Ave. that will house the Clinton campaign’s Toledo field office until November. 

The crowd was diverse — male and female, young and old, from many religious and ethnic backgrounds — but they all seemed to agree that Mrs. Clinton is the most qualified candidate for the office, especially considering “that other person,” as Mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson referred to Donald Trump.

It is one of three regional offices the Clinton campaign is opening this week in Ohio. Mr. Trump has no regional offices in the state.

Mayor Hicks-Hudson laid out her reasons for supporting Mrs. Clinton, emphasizing the former secretary of state’s focus on giving everyone a fair shot in the work force. 

She called on each elected official in the room to pledge to be “on the front line” in the election. They made the pledge by posing for a picture with a cardboard cut-out of Mrs. Clinton that stood in front of a wall adorned with the phrase “shattering the glass ceiling in the Glass City.”

“Get ready for the time of our lives, starting midnight on election night,” Lucas County Commissioners President Tina Skeldon Wozniak said.

Sydney Jones, a University of Toledo student and an organizer for Hillary for Ohio, introduced the mayor. She was one of many college students holding clipboards and signing up volunteers.

“As a woman and a woman of color, I will not accept my status as a second-class citizen,” Ms. Jones said. As she praised Mrs. Clinton for fighting for people of color like her, the crowd responded with a round of “hear, hear.” One woman, Mother Georgia Rogers, pulled a tambourine out of her purse and started dancing.

“I supported Obama, and I felt in my heart he would be the next president,” Ms. Rogers said. “I feel that same way about Hillary.”

The mood was celebratory: Supporters could sign up to volunteer on a calendar made of neon sheets of paper (one man had signed up for 11 days in less than three weeks). Kids drew on a whiteboard beside a drawing of Mrs. Clinton under the word “Herstory.” A cake said “Oh Hill Yes.”

That Mrs. Clinton had recently emerged from a drawn-out FBI investigation about her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state, only to have the state department announce its own investigation today, seemed the last thing on anybody’s mind.

“With this email scandal we looked into the future to get a glimpse of Hillary as president,” Jon Stainbrook, Lucas County Republican Party chairman, said. “She failed miserably in handling top secret information.”

Although Mr. Trump’s campaign has been criticized for being slow in setting up a campaign organization in Ohio, Mr. Stainbrook said he has been working with the Republican National Committee for at least nine months, putting the RNC ahead of the Clinton campaign, while Democratic President Obama’s campaign was established in Ohio before Republican Mitt Romney’s in 2012.

“It’s different now because we’re ahead of the game,” Mr. Stainbrook said.

Both candidates know winning Ohio is crucial to clinching the election.

“As goes Ohio, so goes the nation,” Mr. Stainbrook said. Clinton supporters also stressed the importance of winning Ohio.

Contact Gabby Deutch at: gdeutch@theblade.com, 419-724-6050, or on Twitter @GSDeutch.

First Published July 8, 2016, 4:51 a.m.