After an evening rally at Winona State University, Al spent Thursday with Congressman Tim Walz, Sen. Tarryl Clark and former Congressman Rick Nolan from the Obama campaign, barnstorming southern Minnesota to encourage DFL volunteers to work hard to Get-Out-The-Vote.

They started the day at a GOTV pancake breakfast in Rochester, flipping pancakes and encouraging folks to spend the next five days working hard to elect Barack Obama and the rest of the DFL ticket.

Rochester Post-Bulletin:

In a rally worthy of a homecoming pep fest, U.S. Rep. Tim Walz and U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken fired up the DFL faithful Thursday morning, calling on them to knock on doors and telephone people urging them to vote on Tuesday.

It’s the final push for Walz who is running for a second term in the U.S. House and Franken, who is trying to unseat Sen. Norm Coleman. They are taking part in the “For the Middle Class, For a Change” tour across southern Minnesota.

Democrats filled the basement of Rochester’s Masonic Lodge well before the candidates and their entourage came. They talked politics and ate pancakes. When Franken arrived, he flipped pancakes in front of cameras.

And then the “For The Middle Class, For A Change” Tour was off to Owatonna for a Get-Out-The-Vote rally and chili feed. From the Owatonna People’s Press:

Franken and Democratic Congressman Tim Walz spoke to 175 DFL party faithful at the Elks Club, talking about the change in Washington that could happen for the better.

Walz touted Franken as being the candidate who could bring the Senate to a filibuster-proof majority and pass legislation down from Barack Obama if he¹s elected president.

“I can tell you that when you wake up on Nov. 5 and realize what you have done, there is going to be a sigh, not just from this country but from around the world when they realize we’re moving in the right direction,” Walz said.

Al and Tim Walz joined up with Steve Sarvi, CD 2 Congressional candidate and local Rep. Patti Fritz for a rally at Faribault’s JavaLive coffee shop. The Faribault Daily News came by to check it out.

Nolan, Fritz, Walz, Sarvi and Franken took turns speaking to a full house of supporters wearing T-shirts, hats and stickers, and who were holding up signs in support of their candidates. Each candidate said there was a dire need for those in attendance to get involved for the final five days of the campaign season.

Walz told supporters the political system isn’t broken but rather the right people need to be in place who are open and willing to work with one another to achieve a better nation.

“The strength of this nation is its differences in opinions,” he said. “Your neighbor who has a different sign from the one you like in their yard doesn’t mean they don’t care about this country every bit as much as you. It means they may have a different approach to it.”

We capped off the day with a great rally at MSU Mankato with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, rallying college students to get out and volunteers in the last few days before Election Day. You can watch the coverage on Mankato TV news (KEYC) here.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 at 13:35 and is filed under Blog, From the Trail, News Clips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.