Obama wave still rising in the state

A few weeks ago, Rhea Marrie was managing a candy shop in downtown Minneapolis. Until now, the 35-year-old St. Louis Park woman said, she's voted only for Republicans.

But Marrie quit her job and was in Eau Claire, Wis., on Monday with a caravan of Minnesotans knocking on doors to get people to vote for Sen. Barack Obama in today's Wisconsin presidential primary. Now that she's unemployed, she plans to be a part of Obama's burgeoning "army" in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Last week, Marrie was among the diverse crowd that gathered at Obama's St. Paul headquarters to carry his impressive Minnesota victory forward. The office provided a taste of the fervor that has marked the Obama campaign, a multiracial and grass-roots collection of workers propelling his once-unlikely candidacy -- and earning admiration from leaders of opposing campaigns.

Even though they can't vote, two students from Mexico phoned Spanish-speaking citizens to encourage them to support Obama, while an older woman solicited votes from senior citizens.

While some wonder whether the enthusiasm can last, others see an exceptional moment in American politics unfolding.

"I disagree with Obama on just about every issue," said Brian Sullivan, who ran Republican Mitt Romney's campaign in Minnesota. "But he's an honorable man who's run a great campaign, and he'll be harder to beat because he motivates people to turn out."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Minnesota chairman, Hubert (Buck) Humphrey, said that Obama's 2-to-1 caucus victory in Minnesota "was beyond any organizing effort. There was something else going on."

But Sullivan cautioned: "We'll see if he can get into a national campaign without any specifics. Obama has done a masterful job of saying nothing very well, probably more than anyone in the past 50 years."

Felt something happening

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak has been linked to the Obama phenomena from its start about two years ago.

"Pretty much the time I said hello I said, 'You should run for president,'" recalled Rybak, who is Obama's Minnesota campaign chairman. "I said, 'It's not often that a single person with a single act can change the world, and I think you can.'"

Rybak began to visit college campuses and teaching "Obama 101" more than a year ago. Hundreds of young volunteers, the heart of his organization, began signing on.

At a fundraiser last spring at St. Paul Central High School, several hundred people "gave up an entire beautiful day to sit in a dark auditorium and hear about a presidential election a year and a half away," Rybak said. "Then it became clear something was up."

As the Minnesota caucuses neared, the campaign made it easy for supporters to give of their time. Those who couldn't go to a call center could pull up a list of target voters from the Obama Web page and start dialing from their homes.

Rybak emotionally recalls taking a van full of college students to Buffalo Center, Iowa, and knocking on every single Democrat's door in the Minnesota-Iowa border town of fewer than 1,000 people.

"We saw a part of Iowa that wasn't used to seeing campaigning," he said. "It was one of the most pure political experiences I've ever had."

Finally, Obama's appearance at Target Center on Feb. 2 filled the arena and created blocks-long lines of people waiting to get inside. His supporters sensed a big win, but few dared to believe he would dominate Clinton in Minnesota as he did.

"Every single event we had, I would walk into mostly strangers," Rybak said. "As someone who has been involved in politics for a while, it's a very good feeling."

Fearing the Dean effect

For those involved, the Obama campaign has some similarities to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's populist 2004 campaign, which got off to a fast start and then fell apart.

"Early on, this reminded me a lot of the Dean campaign, which had great promise but didn't ultimately work," said Rybak, who was the first mayor in the country to support both.

Rybak was among those wondering whether the early excitement over Obama could be sustained. But, he said, "when they started coming in with huge amounts of money, largely from grass-roots people, I knew we could put something together."

Jeff Blodgett, executive director of Wellstone Action and a longtime community organizer, said Obama's run has shown a unique combination of a strong focus coupled with a candidate who "elicits a lot of passion" and gets people to do more than just vote.

"Obama is inspirational, and you just don't see a lot of that these days," said Blodgett, who is neutral in the race for the Democratic nomination. He noted that rather than running lots of television ads, Obama wisely opted to open more offices and hire local staffers to "harness the excitement."

Leading up to Super Tuesday, Obama had eight Minnesota campaign offices and 40 full-time staffers, several times more than Clinton.

Inspired to volunteer

Marrie was a Republican partisan until quitting her candy store job and joining Obama's campaign.

"This is much sweeter," she said at the St. Paul office last week while making calls under a sign that read: "Let's go change the world."

For Marrie, Obama's campaign has become her crusade. She plans to go to Ohio in March and Pennsylvania in April in the run-up to their primaries.

"He's brilliant," Marrie said. "He is dynamic and full of wisdom and he has an incredible ability to unify."

Marrie said that Obama has dome something she hadn't thought possible: unify her own family. "We've never all voted for the same person before," she said. "I even got my ex-husband to vote for him."

Jon Tevlin • 612-673-1702