Sen. John McCain brought his presidential campaign to Colorado Springs on Saturday, testing the height of his post-convention "bounce" and laying down an early marker in an effort to bring swing-state Colorado into the Republican column on Election Day.
"We need to carry Colorado. We need to win!" he told a roaring crowd that spilled out of a hangar at the Colorado Jet Center, on the west side of the Colorado Springs Airport.
The Colorado Springs Police Department declined to provide an estimate of the crowd size, but a campaign spokesman, Tom Kise, said 13,000 had gone through security checks.
After spending Friday night at the Antlers Hilton, the candidates and dozens of staffers and media representatives motorcaded to the rally, arriving at 12:30 -- on schedule, but a long wait for the audience, which had been in place, tightly controlled by event security, since at least 10 a.m., listening to a string of speakers including Colorado Springs Mayor Lionel Rivera, State Attorney General John
Suthers and the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Bob Schaffer.
After waiting so long, the crowd was euphoric when McCain, his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and McCain's wife, Cindy, took the stage.
Palin spoke first, warming up the crowd with a 10-minute condensation of her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday. "With your help we're going to go to Washington and shake things up," she declared, and the crowd erupted again in cheers.
Palin recounted her efforts to control spending as governor of Alaska, reminding the crowd that she put the governor's jet plane on eBay. But most of her speech was devoted to praising McCain as a man of character, judgment and resolve. "He's the only man in this race who's got what it takes to lead our country," she told the crowd, which roared its approval.
McCain stepped to the podium and saluted "one of the finest institutions in the world, the United States Air Force Academy." He also praised Henry Cejudo, the local wrestler who won a gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The crowd was enthusiastic, but responded to McCain in a way that several members of the traveling press corps described as an emerging trend: McCain is getting his biggest applause when he praises Palin. When he reprised his acceptance-speech line - "I can't wait to introduce her to the big spenders in Washington, D.C." - the audience erupted in chants of "Sarah! Sarah!"
Then he delved into his stump speech, repeating his "change is coming" mantra as well as his promise that "the first earmarked, pork-barrel-laden, big-spending bill that comes across my desk, I'll veto it."
He was cheered again when he promised that "we will achieve energy independence in our time," developing alternate sources of electric power and energy-saving vehicles. "We'll drill new wells, and we'll drill them now," he said. "We can create 700,000 jobs by building 45 nuclear plants by the year 2030."
Most of McCain's speech was familiar to those who have followed him on the stump. But after being accused by his Democratic rivals, Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, of ignoring the sputtering American economy during the Republican convention that ended Thursday in St. Paul, Minn., McCain addressed the subject in Colorado Springs.
"My friends, these are tough times," he said, quieting the crowd. "The jobs number" - a reference to the 6.1 percent unemployment rate announced on Friday - "is bad."
"You're worried about keeping your job or finding a new one," he said. "You're struggling to put food on the table and to stay in your home." But he promised to lead a government that will "stand on your side and not in your way," reigniting the audience's enthusiasm.
The only things the crowd disliked were mentions of Obama, Biden, any other Democrat or moveon.org, which McCain accused of libeling Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq. All were booed lustily.
A police watch commander, Lt. Mark Compte, said the event went smoothly, with no arrests reported. "The only problems I'm aware of were traffic issues," Compte said.
The McCain-Palin appearance in Colorado Springs was only the third stop in their general-election campaign, which began on Friday when they visited the suburbs of Milwaukee and Detroit. After Colorado Springs the candidates and their entourage jetted off to another rally in Albuquerque.
Of the four states visited by McCain in the immediate aftermath of the GOP convention, three are generally regarded as swing states. But with less than two months till Election Day, Nov. 4, Colorado seems the closest to the Republicans' grasp. Pollster.com, which tracks other surveys to produce a "poll of polls," was showing the McCain campaign trailing by 2 percentage points in Colorado, by 5 points in Michigan, 7 points in New Mexico and 10 in Wisconsin.
But all those polls were conducted before McCain made Palin his surprise pick for vice president, and before the showcase of the Republican convention.
"It's going to be a really tough battle in Colorado," Palin told the crowd on Saturday. "But we will win."
As always in statewide races in Colorado, the key to the Republicans' chances is their ability to secure a heavy turnout in conservative Colorado Springs to counter the customary Democratic majority in Denver.
John Straayer, a political science professor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, said the appearance by the McCain-Palin ticket so early in the general election campaign "reinforces what we have known all along: We continue to be a pivotal state."
While saying the Republicans stood to "get some mileage because of state media coverage" of the Colorado Springs event, Straayer wondered whether a rally intended to activate the social conservatives who predominate here would play well with the "chamber of commerce Republicans" he said are more common elsewhere in the state. These Republicans, he said, are "basically feeling the party has left them."
But the Colorado Springs rally was notable for the absence of any reference to social "wedge" issues like abortion or gay marriage.
This may have been the biggest event on the Colorado political calendar since the Democratic National Convention in Denver last month, but not all eyes were focused on the Springs. Denny Herzog, editor of the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, said the McCain-Palin event was overshadowed locally by the fall gathering of Club 20, a Western Slope civic organization, featuring a debate Saturday evening between the U.S. Senate candidates Mark Udall and Bob Schaffer.
"It's kind of the high point of the political season" in his part of the state, Herzog said. "I think if that were not going on there'd be a fair amount more interest" in the McCain-Palin appearance.
Herzog said he expected numerous forays by both presidential campaigns into Colorado before Nov. 4. "I think we'll see a bunch of all four of them," he said. "I don't know if this is any more important."
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Contact the writer: 476-1654 or dean.toda@gazette.com
I wonder how often the MSM applies marginally insulting words like "mantra" to McCain, vs how often they do it to Obama, eh?
This is proof positive that we all better get down to our state McCain offices and get on the list so that we know when the tickets are available.
I was at a Laura Bush event in 2004 and I thought the crowd was huge. Standing room only. Nothing like this though.