Obama draws Mile High crowds : rockymountainnews.com

FORT COLLINS — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking to a young crowd of about 45,250 at Colorado State University, urged them to vote early, to keep the faith and promised to find ways to help with tuition if they were willing to serve their country.

“I’m going to make a deal with you,” he said. “If you’re willing to commit to joining the military, to joining the Peace Corps, or whatever way you decide to serve, then we are going to make sure you have the money to go to college, no ifs, ands or buts.”

Speaking on the lawn to students who had been gathering since 4 a.m., Obama urged them to put an end to the philosophies of President George Bush and Sen. John McCain.

“I can take nine more days of John McCain’s attacks,” Obama said. “But what the American people can’t take is four more years of the same thing. We’re not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain.”

Obama also hit hard on the need for new jobs and more renewable energy. “I know these are difficult times in Fort Collins. I know many of you are worried,” he said.

But he urged them to embrace a new economy based on renewable energy jobs.

“As president I want to invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy, to create 5 million new green jobs. The people of Colorado are doing it,” he said, as the crowd chanted “Yes we can.”

Obama drew a huge crowd in Denver earlier in the day when he spoke to an estimated 100,000 people at Civic Center Park, hammering away at the economic themes that have come to dominate the final days of the campaign.

If police estimates were accurate, the crowd total at downtown Civic Center Park would be nearly as large as the number of people who attended Obama’s closing Democratic National Convention speech at Invesco Field. It would also be in the same ballpark as a recent rally in St. Louis, which drew an estimated 100,000. But police estimates varied widely - between 75,000 to 100,000, depending on who was talking. Such figures are subject to large margins of error and impossible to know with certainty.

Whatever the numbers, the crowd filled much of the park and sprawled east to Lincoln Park and the west steps of the state capitol.

In what was as much a get-out-the-vote rally as a stump speech, Obama asked for a show of hands from those who voted early. For those who hadn’t, he told them to turn to someone near them who had and ask for instructions on how to do it. Next door, at the Wellington Webb building, the city of Denver was opening early voting booths on a Sunday in anticipation of a surge following Obama’s speech.

It was another electric political moment in a remarkable 2008 in Denver, and in Colorado - a once reliably Republican state. It’s turned Colorado into a political battleground attracting repeated visits from both the Obama-Joe Biden campaign and Republican candidate John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin.

The enormous and fired-up crowd Sunday appears to be another mark of Obama’s popularity in a state where a Rocky Mountain News/CBS 4 poll published on Saturday found Obama with a 12-point lead in a survey of 500 registered voters.

“This is unbelievable,” said Jody Danforth, 31, visiting her mother in Denver from Santa Rosa, Calif., as the crowd built Sunday morning. At one point, the line to get into the park stretched from Colfax Avenue and Cherokee Street all the way around Civic Center park, around the Denver Public Library and into the south side of the park.

Obama offered a fairly standard stump speech, highlighting differences in his tax and economic approach to rival McCain. But he also unveiled a fresh assault on McCain, claiming McCain was taking his attacks “to a whole new level.”

“The other day … He said that I was like George W. Bush. You can’t make this stuff up, folks. In what may be the strangest twist of all, Sen. McCain said that I would somehow continue to Bush economic policies - and that he, John McCain would change them,” Obama said.

“But then, just this morning, Sen. McCain said that he and President Bush - “share a common philosophy.” That’s right, Colorado. I guess this was John McCain finally giving us a little straight talk, and owning up to the fact that he and George Bush actually have a whole lot in common.”

Ralph Rodriguez and his 15-year-old son, Vianes, went to the Obama rally in Civic Center Park earlier today but couldn’t get in. So, they decided to haul up to Fort Collins, and they got eighth-row seats.

Ralph admitted that while he’s always been a Democrat, he had never been politically active before this year. So what got the Denver resident so interested all the sudden? His son.

Vianes said he has been interested in politics since the 2004 presidential race. He enjoyed Obama’s speech in Fort Collins Sunday because it had a good mix of both positive messaging and criticism of John McCain, he said.

“He’s a good role model for kids,” Vianes said of Obama.