CLAREMONT, N.H. (AP) – Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama had little difficulty winning over the audience at a senior center made famous by the husband of his biggest rival.
The Illinois senator spoke Friday at the Earl M. Bourdon Senior Center where President Bill Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich shook hands in 1995 and promised to create a bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform. The commission never materialized.
The crowd waited an hour for Obama to arrive and swarmed him for autographs after he spoke.
“By the way, you had us from your first hello,” said Carol Thebarge, who went on to ask Obama about President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq.
The subject of Iraq also produced the event’s most contentious moment, when a man compared Bush to Hitler and pressed Obama to do the same. Obama declined.
“I wouldn’t draw those analogies,” Obama said. “I think this campaign season offers us an opportunity for a fresh start.”
Obama’s third trip to the early primary state was a quick one – he canceled a town hall forum in Keene due to a snowstorm that began Friday afternoon. Instead, he planned to fly to Oakland, Calif., where he is scheduled to attend a rally Saturday, said spokesman Reid Cherlin.
“The real safety concern is for the people trying to get to the event, not for the senator trying to get out of here,” Cherlin said.
At the senior center, Obama repeated his call for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who has been criticized for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Obama noted that he had voted against confirming Gonzales.
“What I said was, ‘This is a guy who sees himself as George Bush’s lawyer as opposed to the people’s lawyer,” he said.
Ginny Raymond of Grafton, Vt., said she didn’t know much about Obama but liked what she had seen on the Oprah Winfrey show.
“He just radiates honesty and charisma. I feel it,” she said. “It’s just something that he gives off and it’s transferred from him to others.”
After seeing Obama in person, Raymond said she no longer supports Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, in part because she believes Clinton let the nation down by not running in 2004.
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