Patrick urges Iowa to put hope in Obama

Makes case for friend

Governor Deval Patrick campaigned with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois yesterday in Burlington, Iowa. "If you are willing to put your hope on the line, then Barack Obama wins, and so do we," Patrick told the crowd. (Shiho Fukada for The Boston Globe)

FORT MADISON, Iowa - Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts raced across eastern Iowa with Barack Obama yesterday, introducing him to hundreds of people at rallies in high school gymnasiums as the presidential candidate who could "help us rebuild that unity of purpose and common cause."

Wherever he went, Patrick drew strong parallels between his own improbable campaign for governor last year and the Illinois senator's quest for the presidency, entreating Iowans, as he did residents of Massachusetts last year, to "take a chance on your own aspirations" by supporting a campaign about hope and change.

"If you are willing to put your hope on the line, then Barack Obama wins, and so do we," Patrick told a crowd of about 500 in Burlington yesterday morning, as the crowd burst into applause.

Patrick asked Iowans to disregard pundits and pollsters who say the senator has too little experience, adding that people said the same about his own long-shot bid for governor.

"I kept saying to the people of Massachusetts, as I say to the people of Iowa, 'It's not about whose turn it is, it's about whose time it is,' " he said.

Obama is in a tight Democratic race with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in Iowa, which holds its pivotal first-in-the-nation caucuses Thursday.

Patrick, a friend of Obama's for about a decade and one of the few nationally prominent African-American elected officials, came to Iowa to serve as not only a messenger but as a personification of Obama's message of hope and optimism.

"His grandfather worked as a janitor helping to support his family," Obama told the Burlington crowd, calling Patrick one of the finest governors in the country.

It is not clear how much Patrick was able to help Obama's cause.

He was certainly not a draw because audience members said they did not know he was coming, and most had never heard of him.

"I thought you still had a woman governor," said Robin Thomas, 60, a social worker who saw Patrick in Burlington, who said he was pretty sure he was thinking of former acting governor Jane Swift.

Still, in one of his first real forays onto the national campaign stage, Patrick seemed to charm his audiences, drawing warm applause and cheers out of the sleepy early morning crowd in Burlington.

Sharon Law, 61, a nurse from Fort Madison who is trying to decide between Obama and Clinton, said Patrick did not sway her to Obama - only the candidates would influence her decision, she said - but she was as impressed with his speech as she was with Obama's address to the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston that helped make him a national figure.

"Who knows, maybe we'll be caucusing for him someday," she gushed.

"That's crazy," Patrick snorted later, as he ate a box lunch the campaign gave him. "I already have the best job."

But he was clearly having a good time. He said, based on his first impression in Iowa, Obama's campaign seemed "really tight" and quite diverse in terms of age, socioeconomic background, and race and ethnicity.

On the press bus a bit later, he drew parallels between his own campaign and Obama's, describing how he built the grassroots organization that carried him to victory.

Patrick also talked extensively about race. He told a reporter, who asked how Obama could make his case to both blacks and whites, how he had learned to negotiate racial differences by shifting, as he came of age, between the mostly black community where he was raised on the South Side of Chicago, and the mostly white boarding school he attended, Milton Academy.

"I've had a lot of experience and so has he and so have many, many black people, learning to straddle different worlds," he said. "And for me, and I think the same is true for Barack, what we've learned is to be the bridge. Don't look for some artifice; don't figure out how to be one way in one setting and a different way in some other setting - just be the bridge. You be the one that joins those disparate worlds."

Patrick flew in early yesterday morning on a Learjet chartered by the Obama campaign from Pittsfield - about 10 minutes from his vacation home in Richmond. He spoke at four rallies, introducing the person who introduced Obama.

Patrick is scheduled to travel separately from Obama today, visiting a community breakfast, a church, and then canvassing with supporters in Davenport this afternoon.

He said he plans to campaign for Obama in New Hampshire next weekend just before the Jan. 8 primary, and in South Carolina in mid-January before its Jan. 26 contest.

Asked what he thought he can bring to the campaign, Patrick replied, "I'm another interested citizen here to help, because I have a stake in this, too. I'm going to do what I can."

Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com.