In South L.A. rally, Obama vows sweeping changes
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By Michael Finnegan
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
4:46 PM PST, February 20, 2007
latimes.com
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama capped a three-day campaign swing through California today with a South Los Angeles rally where he told thousands of supporters he would "transform the country" with sweeping change at home and abroad.
Vowing to shatter the insider culture of the nation's capital, the freshman Illinois senator said he would end the war in Iraq, expand health coverage to all Americans and fix the country's ailing public school system.
"There's something happening in the country," he told a crowd waving blue "Obama '08" signs. "There's a mood in the air. There's a sense that the way we've been doing business for the last couple of decades has to change, that we are at a crossroads in this nation's history."
Obama's rally at the Rancho Cienega Recreation Complex in Crenshaw was the centerpiece of his trip to California, his first since he announced his candidacy 10 days ago.
Before returning to his hometown of Chicago this evening, Obama plans to collect more than $1 million in Beverly Hills at a glitzy fund-raising reception thrown by DreamWorks studio founders David Geffen, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
Celebrities who bought $2,300 tickets to the Beverly Hills Hilton soiree include Barbra Streisand and George Clooney, said Andy Spahn, an organizer of the event.
After the reception, Obama is scheduled to dine at Geffen's Beverly Hills estate with roughly 40 guests — those who raised at least $46,000 apiece. He raised money earlier this week in La Jolla, San Francisco and Palo Alto.
The huge crowd at the Crenshaw event reflected the extraordinary interest that Obama has generated among Democrats. It is highly unusual for a presidential candidate to draw thousands of supporters to a Los Angeles rally nearly a year before California's primary — or even to try.
"Obama may be the only one who can do that right now, which is significant," said Joe Trippi, who ran Howard Dean's White House campaign in 2004.
Obama, who is striving to be the nation's first black president, plans similar rallies later this week in Cleveland, Ohio, and Austin, Texas.
The gathering in the predominantly black Crenshaw area was part of his effort to build support among African Americans, a mainstay of the Democratic Party. His only press interview during the California trip, aides said, was with the Los Angeles Sentinel, an African American weekly newspaper. On March 4, he plans to speak in Selma, Ala., at a commemoration of the landmark 1965 voting rights march.
The visit also underscored California's more prominent role in the 2008 race for the White House. To enhance the state's clout in the party nomination contests, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state lawmakers have agreed to advance the state's primary to Feb. 5.
Other big states — New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas and Illinois among them — are also taking steps to move their primaries to Feb. 5. In years past, candidates would typically dart through such states — for the most part unseen in public — to raise money for the crucial opening contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
But with the crush of primaries now likely to occur Feb. 5, candidates already are jostling to heighten their visibility in big states that rarely see so many of them so early in the election season.
A leading Democratic candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, will hold a campaign forum Tuesday in Miami. A top Republican, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, will appear in Long Beach with Schwarzenegger on Wednesday to spotlight his efforts against global warming, a popular cause in California. Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani stumped for several days in California last week.
"It's going to be physically impossible for a candidate to spend time in 15 or 20 states in the first week of February next year, so the more time and effort they put into those states now, the more of a presence they'll have to sustain them when the bullets start flying," said Dan Schnur, communication director of McCain's campaign in 2000.
Yet strategists say the dominant force in the big-state primaries on Feb. 5 is still likely to be momentum gained or lost in the earlier contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and — for Democrats — Nevada.
"If you can't in win any of the four early states, then all the campaigning in the world and no amount of money — nothing — will allow you to make up for lost momentum in that many states," said Nick Baldick, a strategist for Democratic candidate John Edwards.
Still, with the price of a White House victory running into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the prime focus of candidate travels to the big states remains money. |
