Hillary Clinton visits U to campaign for Franken

Fourteen days before the election, supporters of senatorial candidate Al Franken crowded the McNamara Alumni Center and bopped to Beach Boys songs while a parade of Democratic officials, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., delivered speeches.

Outside, an overflow crowd of around 300 watched the broadcast on a screen outside the venue and braced themselves against the cold.

Speakers included Clinton, 3rd Congressional District candidate Ashwin Madia and Al Franken’s fourth-grade teacher, among others.

The need for change, a slogan of presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s campaign, was a theme of each speech, including Franken’s.

“I’ve been all over this state,” Franken said. “People are outraged.”

Franken also condemned the effect of the Bush administration’s policies on middle class families, and said grassroots organizing was the only way to bring change.

“If you want a senator who’ll give tax breaks to the middle class, rather than millionaires, you’re going to have to fight hard for the next 14 days,” he said.

Franken also said he supports a $5,000 credit for college.

Even though the event was scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m., the center had reached capacity by 4:15 p.m. and no further entry was allowed. The overflow crowd was directed to televisions in two meeting rooms and the larger screen outside the center.

The event kicked off a grassroots campaign where around 77,000 volunteers will mobilize voters for the Nov. 4 election, according to Franken’s communications director Andy Barr.

“We’re going to be making one and half million phone calls for our get out the vote effort and knocking on 2.8 million doors,” Barr said. “What we‘re looking to do in the next two weeks is, as Keith Ellison likes to say, explode the vote, for the entire DFL ticket.”

The venue of a university was apt because university students often are deeply concerned about political issues like rising cost of education, the war in Iraq and energy policies, Barr said.

“A big part of [voter mobilization] is the enthusiasm that there is for Al’s message on college campuses,” he said. “We’re relying on college students and the academic community and folks at the U to help us generate a lot of enthusiasm and, frankly, volunteer for the last couple weeks.”

Christine Cira , a marketing junior and co-chair of Students for Al, said the speech would introduce freshman and transfer students to Franken’s positions.

“If it’s not going to sway voters, than it’s definitely going to inform voters,” she said.

Anthropology graduate student Rebecca Slepkov said she attended the event because she’s a Franken supporter, even though she’s unable to vote for him as a Canadian citizen.

“I wish I had time to do more, I’m a frickin’ grad student,” she said. “I would have traded my Canadian vote for this one.”

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said it was four years ago that he attended the memorial for Sen. Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash and whose position Franken’s opponent Sen. Norm Coleman now fills.

“That’s Paul Wellstone’s seat, Norm Coleman has got it,” Rybak said. “Go get it.”