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ASHLAND, Ore. — Andy Stallman supports Sen. Barack Obama, but didn’t need much motivation to see former President Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, in southern Oregon this weekend.

“If you don’t walk two blocks to hear the former president speak, that’s apathy,” Stallman said Sunday.

From Ashland and Astoria to Baker City and Bend, many Oregonians haven’t had to travel more than a few blocks to see the former president campaign for his wife this primary season.

On a day when an estimated 60,000 Portlanders turned out to see Obama speak, a crowd of about 1,100 stood in a sunny courtyard at Southern Oregon University to hear the Clintons.

Some arrived three hours before the event’s scheduled time of 5:15 p.m. to assure themselves a chance to get close, the Mail Tribune newspaper of Medford reported.

“I wasn’t sure what the crowds would be like and I wanted to be among the first in line,” Hilary-Morgan Watt, a student at Southern Oregon University, told the newspaper. “I really wanted to shake Bill Clinton’s hand.”

Though polls show Obama leading in Oregon, Watt said she thought there was still a chance for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to take the Oregon primary.

“I think there’s still a lot of people who can be swayed,” she said. “Lots of my peers aren’t aware of the issues.”

Clinton spoke for about an hour, touching on numerous issues. He repeated the notion that Hillary Clinton would do better than Obama against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, and made much of her besting Obama in the swing states of Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania.

He drew cheers from students when he noted that his wife would fight to increase the amount of Pell grants for students, make student loans cheaper, and recruit the new teachers that public schools will need.

The former president then shook hands with dozens of people and signed autographs. As the crowd drifted away, some doubted whether he had changed any minds.

“I think he just reinforced what people were already thinking,” said Bob Spurlock of Medford. “Tuesday will be a big tell-all.”

The Clintons also spoke in Salem on Sunday. Though it was Bill Clinton’s third trip to the mid-Willamette Valley in recent weeks, it was Chelsea Clinton’s first stop in the capital city.

In Ashland and Salem, she used a version of a line that has been a hit for her on the campaign trail.

“As proud as I am of my dad and what he’s done, I’m even more proud of my mom and what she will do,” Chelsea Clinton said in Salem. “Because I think my mom will be a better president.”

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 8:44 am and is filed under Hillary Clinton, Oregon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.