Former President Bill Clinton visited McArthur Court on Thursday, filling the arena with more than 4,000 people as he promoted U.S. Senate candidate Bill Bradbury and Oregon gubernatorial candidate Ted Kulongoski. U.S. Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Eugene, Everclear lead singer Art Alexakis and ASUO President Rachel Pilliod also spoke.
With five days remaining before the election, speakers focused on raising support for the two faltering Democrats. Recent polls by Riley Research Associates for Portland television station KGW show Bradbury trailing Smith 34 to 56 percent. A gubernatorial poll showed Kulongoski’s battle with Republican Kevin Mannix as a statistical tie.
Clinton, who just visited Hawaii and soon will travel to Arizona and Michigan to raise support for other Democrats, spent much of his time explaining to the crowd why he cares about politics even though his political career is over.
The Democratic Party is “becoming more diverse, with more opportunities for more different kinds of people,” he said. “And now that I have a little distance from all that, I want you to know that’s why I flew overnight to Hawaii and then flew back overnight to Oregon, and why when this election is over I will have done over 100 events for the members of our party in this election season.”
But Clinton didn’t just praise his own party.

The former president launched scathing critiques of the Republican Party, accusing them of cutting education and blocking his past efforts to make corporations more accountable.
“We try to govern and proceed by evidence and argument, trial and error, but always trying to move forward and move together,” he said. “Most of our counterparts in the Republican Party — I’ve watched them for a long time now — they don’t believe government has much to do with that, but they like being in power.”
Bradbury and Kulongoski also spoke in support of their own campaigns at the rally.
“Having you all here actually brings life to each of us in this campaign as it comes down to the last four or five days,” Kulongoski said. “It is you who actually make this all possible.”
He added that students should work hard to “turn over the United States Senate seat in this state to Bill Bradbury and make sure that the governor of this state is a Democrat.”
Unlike Kulongoski, Bradbury focused on personally attacking
his opponent.
“Now, I see a few scary costumes out there, but I gotta tell you the scariest costume of all is the idea that Gordon Smith will serve six more years in the United States Senate,” he said. “When Gordon Smith goes out tonight on trick-or-treat, he won’t even have to make a new costume, because he’s created a new costume for the last nine months, and that costume is: ‘I’m a moderate.’”

Even Alexakis kept a political tone in his message.
“The only way we can make changes this election and in the next election in 2004 is by not being complacent,” he said. “Anyone who tells you that their vote doesn’t count is wrong — look at what happened two years ago.
“Anyway, you guys all know that, you’re all liberal Democrats aren’t ya?”