Tens of thousands jammed Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland today to watch Barack Obama wrap up a busy weekend in Oregon and a historic campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Portland Fire Bureau estimated the crowd at 72,000. About 60,000 squeezed inside the gates and 12,000 watched from outside.
It was a record crowd for an Oregon political event. In 2004, an estimated 50,000 turned out to see Democrat John Kerry, who brought along movie idol Leonardo DiCaprio and rocker Jon Bon Jovi.
Obama was the biggest star at Sunday’s gathering -though a popular Portland band, The Decemberists, provided the warm-up act. With blue skies and temperatures in the 80s, thousands waited in lines that snaked through downtown Portland streets.
“We just wanted to see him,” said Norman Yoshida, 64, of Portland. “We need somebody who can be inspirational, and he inspires.”
The event capped a weekend of Oregon campaigning for Obama and Democrat Hillary Clinton. After so many states moved their primaries ahead on the calendar, political strategists assumed the Democratic presidential nominee would be decided well ahead of Oregon’s May 20 primary.
But Oregon is still very much in play.
Neither candidate can gain enough delegates with the primaries in Oregon and Kentucky on Tuesday to clinch the nomination. But Obama hopes Oregon will give him the majority of the pledged delegates. Meanwhile, Clinton, who is behind in Oregon and ahead in Kentucky, could use a strong showing to prove she’s the best candidate to face Republican John McCain in November.
Clinton left Oregon for Kentucky after a televised town hall meeting Friday, but former President Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea stayed behind Saturday and today to crisscross the state talking to voters.
Sporting a blue “Hillary 2008” baseball cap, the former president told more than 1,000 people at Salem’s sun-drenched Riverfront Park to ignore the growing news media consensus that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has all but wrapped up the nomination.
“Don’t you let anyone tell you she can’t win,” Clinton said. “You can still make your voices heard.”
Obama started and ended his day speaking to smaller crowds in Gresham and Pendleton.
This morning, he met with seniors at the Huntington Terrace assisted-living center. Obama, who needs to boost his chances with senior voters, promised to protect the Social Security system by expanding the payroll tax so that it applies to people with incomes above $102,000 a year. “We have an obligation to secure the future of one of the most successful programs in history,” he said.
Tonight, Obama held another town hall at the Pendleton Convention Center in easter Oregon. About 3,000 people attended.
But the big party was in Portland.
Obama’s first words to the cheering crowd: “Wow.” “Wow.” And “Wow.”
“This is spectacular,” he said.
Obama’s wife, Michelle, and two daughters joined him on the stage. The candidate spoke for about 40 minutes, drawing some of the loudest applause when he promised to end the Iraq war and when he said other cities need to follow the lead Portland has taken on mass transit and alternative energy.
The Obama campaign supplied plastic beach balls that were batted around the crowd. Rock music blared, a few people danced and volunteers handed out cups of water.
Some in the crowd said they’d already voted for Clinton.
“I actually didn’t vote for Obama,” said Tita Compere, 25, who spent 10 hours Saturday volunteering for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. But Compere was impressed by the crowd’s diversity, something she felt was lacking in Clinton’s televised Friday night event. “It was just 40-year-old white women,” she said.
Some in the crowd were still undecided.
This will be the first time Elizabeth Dorman, 18, gets to vote. As she stood in line with her mother, Robin, 48, she said she likes both Clinton and Obama. “I’m still wavering,” she said.
Several people talked about the historical significance of this year’s campaigns. Before the candidate took the stage, many turned their digital cameras to record the huge crowd.
Politically, the afternoon on Portland’s Waterfront Park needed to accomplish two things for Obama, said Jim Moore, a political science professor at Pacific University.
Sunday’s event needed to remind his enthusiastic young supporters not to forget to turn in their ballots. And it must position Obama against McCain in a state that might be a battleground state in November, Moore said.
Obama mentioned Clinton a few times Sunday. But he spent most of his time talking about McCain. He said a McCain presidency would mean a third term for George W. Bush.
“If you vote for me, then I promise we won’t just win Oregon, we’ll win this nomination and the election in November,” he said.
Devin McClain, 23, flew up from San Diego to volunteer for the campaign and see the speech. She said the campaign meant a lot to her personally because like Obama, her father is black and her mother is white. “I thought it was amazing,” she said afterwards. “Actually, I started crying.”
In wrapping up the case for his wife, Bill Clinton did not criticize Obama. Instead, he directed his sharpest comments at the news media, citing what he said were recent studies that concluded that the Democratic primary campaign had been the subject of “the most biased, one-sided media coverage in the history of American politics,” and Democratic Party officials for their handling of the disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan.
Hillary Clinton won both the Florida and Michigan primaries, although neither she nor Obama campaigned in those states and Obama’s name did not appear on the Michigan ballot. Because both states broke Democratic Party rules by moving their primaries forward, the party has threatened to void their delegates.
In Salem, Clinton received a rousing introduction from Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who has remained a staunchly loyal Hillary Clinton superdelegate, one of the delegates not bound by state voting results.
Kulongoski called the New York senator “the most competent person. . .the smartest person. . .the person most qualified from day one” to be the next president.
Bill Clinton outlined his wife’s detailed plans on the economy, energy and health care, and made a special appeal to young people, who have been a bulwark of Obama’s support. He said many of them could expect a long life span, and that Hillary Clinton would increase funding for research into health issues affecting the elderly.
Clinton and his daughter began their day at Woodlawn Elementary School in Northeast Portland, promoting the work of the I Have A Dream Foundation, which encourages low-income children to graduate from high school and go to college. Dressed in blue jeans, a black T-shirt and running shoes, the former president spent several minutes on his hands and knees planting tomato seedlings in the school’s community garden while providing a running discourse on the best planting methods to a group of youngsters.
Before traveling to Salem, the Clintons stopped for lunch at Mother’s Bistro in downtown Portland, where downtown streets were clogged with people heading for Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park and a massive rally featuring Obama.
The Clintons ended the day at another rally in Ashland, the last major Clinton campaign event before ballot counting begins.
— Michelle Cole; michellecole@news.oregonian.com
— The Oregonian’s Ashbel S. Green, Dave Hogan, Noelle Crombie and Whitney Malkin contributed to this posting.
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