CLINTON PLAYS TO OVERFLOW CROWD IN DENVER

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Oct 24, 2007 by ED SEALOVER

DENVER - An overflow crowd welcomed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to her first major Colorado rally Tuesday, cheering the Democratic presidential front-runner's anti-incumbent bravado.

The New York Democrat spoke to a crowd of about 5,000 at Denver's Auraria Campus about health care, education and renewable energy. She proposed a universal pre-kindergarten program and promised to commit $50 billion to a strategic clean energy fund, funding it by taking away subsidies to oil companies.

She drew her biggest applause by bashing the Bush administration on topics from its handling of the Iraq war to federal overpayments to studentloan companies. Calling the current leadership "an orgy of cronyism and no-bid contracts," Clinton vowed to turn around a country whose reputation and morale she described as dim compared to the admiration that it inspired after World War II.

"I want to be the president who not only gets the rest of the world feeling that way again, I want to get us feeling that way about ourselves again," she told the crowd.

Clinton had held a fundraiser in Aspen but had not previously played to a significant audience in Colorado. Still, polls have shown her with a significant lead in the state over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and others in the Democratic field.

The crowd grew so large that staffers turned away even people who had tickets. Many seemed happy to stand outside the central area and listen to the former first lady.

They heard Clinton list goals that included the restoration of American leadership, the rebuilding of a prosperous middle class and the reform of government, including the abdication of some executive power. People do not have confidence in American government, she said repeatedly.

They heard plans to offer 47 million uninsured Americans the same kind of health benefits now given to Congress. They heard also about her desire to bring American troops home from Iraq quickly because, as she said, the Iraqi government hasn't done its job to unite the country.

"We cannot leave our brave young men and women as the referees of the Iraqi civil war," she said near the beginning of an address that lasted about 20 minutes.

Stacy Ferner of Denver, who attended the event with her 10-year- old daughter Madison, said the talk of increasing health care hit home with them because she donated one of her kidneys to Madison.

"It's a shoo-in," Stacy Ferner said when asked about Clinton's chances to become America's first female president. "I can't understand how anybody could do anything else."

Sitting in a grass patch beyond the enclosed rally area, however, University of Colorado-Denver student Anastasia Greenfield said she doesn't buy Clinton's logic on health care. Such reform would create a Canadian-style bureaucratic mess and would cost millions of dollars in new taxes, she said.

"She says she will cut taxes. That won't happen," Greenfield said.

Colorado rockers Big Head Todd and the Monsters revved up the crowd before Clinton's entry, and college students abounded. Longtime Democrat Hank Fischer of Littleton said he was amazed at the number of young people present.

Sharon Young, the owner of PoliticalShop.com who was doing a brisk business in selling "Bill Clinton for First Dude" buttons outside the rally, said she was shocked by the size of the crowd. After attending a dozen rallies in other states, she estimated this was the second-largest turnout she'd seen.

CONTACT THE WRITER: (303) 837-0613 or ed.sealover@gazette.com