Many new voters agree 'time has come' for Obama
CHICAGO -- Working the phones at Sen. Barack Obama's headquarters here on the biggest voting day yet in the presidential campaign, volunteer Tyler Bush said he got lots of calls from California, the richest delegate prize up for grabs on Super Tuesday.
Obama's campaign has stressed its ability to bring in new voters, and Bush said most of the California callers were looking for information about where to vote. "You could tell from the phone calls that a lot of people were first-time voters, unsure of the process."
Excited campaign volunteers gathered in a Chicago hotel ballroom — where Obama celebrated his Senate victory in 2004 — to watch returns and cheer Obama. He spoke before California results were known.
"There is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know," Obama told the crowd. "Our time has come. Our movement is real. And change is coming to America."
Obama reiterated his "respect" for rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but looked to the campaign against the Republican nominee when he said, "This fall we owe the American people a real choice."
And he looked to Saturday's primary in Louisiana when he said, "We are the hope of the woman who fears that her city will not be rebuilt and she cannot somehow claim the life that was swept away in a terrible storm. Yes, she can."
Obama had wrapped up his Super Tuesday campaign with a raucous rally in Boston with Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee, and Sen. Edward Kennedy.
The support was not enough to claim Massachusetts, which Clinton took by a large margin, but the Obama camp was focused on delegate counts.
"It's all about the delegates," said Greg Diephouse, a state employee and longtime Obama supporter. Obama did well in states where he had campaigned in a recent sweep through Super Tuesday states, he added. Obama won Minnesota, which he visited Saturday; Delaware, where he held a rally Sunday; and Connecticut, where he gave a rousing speech to nearly 17,000 people in Hartford on Monday.
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