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.

In the race to reach Super Tuesday voters, Obama held a week of campaign rallies before crowds of thousands. He also spent $11 million on TV ads in 18 states.

Obama voted Tuesday afternoon at his local polling place, Beulah Shoesmith Elementary School on the city's South Side.

"We've been closing some ground. My guess is we'll have a good night," he said afterward.

Volunteers who had spent the day working at phone banks said they felt Obama's momentum growing.

Campaign worker A.J. Weiss said he reached some Clinton voters "who politely declined to talk," but "a lot of people that did want to talk (about Obama) were truly inspired, I think, by the senator."

"In the last week there's been a definite surge. People you talk to on the street, they're jumping on the bandwagon," Bush said. He decided to vote for Obama after learning of his work as a community organizer helping laid-off steelworkers in Gary, Ind., near Bush's home.

"I've been looking for a leader for a long time, and he's that guy," Bush said.