COLUMBIA, SC – Black South Carolina voters, who will determine the outcome of next month’s Democratic primary there, came out by the thousands yesterday to see the first lady of daytime television endorse Barack Obama.
Oprah Winfrey was introduced by Obama’s wife, Michelle, as “a woman you know you can trust.”
Some viewed the line as a jab at Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose numbers have crumbled as Democrats drop her in favor of the fresh face whose “tongue is dipped in the unvarnished truth,” as Winfrey put it.
Party officials estimated that the roughly 30,000 people who flowed into the University of South Carolina’s football stadium set an attendance record for a campaign event in the state.
The event was extensively organized and aimed at translating yesterday’s enthusiasm into actual votes.
In her first foray into politics, Oprah drew nearly 70,000 people in appearances with Obama over the weekend at two events in Iowa, one in South Carolina and one last night in New Hampshire, where about 8,500 supporters showed up.
As people streamed into the Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, SC, they were each handed a slip of paper. On the front was a list of four South Carolina voters to call using their cellphones, and on the back was a script touting Obama.
There were many whites in the crowd, but the vast majority was African-American, who make up half of the Democratic electorate in South Carolina.
The Obama campaign said yesterday that it had signed up 2,307 new volunteers, the majority of whom had never before had any contact with the campaign.
Starting at 5:30 a.m., long lines of people streamed into the stadium. They were greeted by a handmade sign that read, “THE LINE FOR CHANGE STARTS HERE!”
Clearly, fans had come to see Winfrey, but they waved Obama campaign signs and wore T-shirts that read, “Got Hope?”
And when Winfrey talked of Obama, those in the crowd roared, stomped their feet and screamed.
Winfrey rebutted a major line of attack by his opponents, who, she says, believe that “experience with politics as usual is more valuable than the wisdom won from years of serving people outside the walls of Washington, DC.”
“There are those who say it is not his time, that he should wait his turn,” she said, a clear reference to the Clinton campaign. “Think about where you’d be in your life if you’d waited when people told you to. I wouldn’t be where I am if I’d waited on the people who told me it couldn’t be.”
As Obama emerged waving from the tunnel normally used by the home-team Gamecocks, Winfrey said, “It’s Obama time! It’s Obama time!”
Obama gave his usual 40- minute speech promising a new kind of politics. He brought down the house with a slap at Clinton by promising to release all of his “kindergarten papers.”
That was a reference to her campaign accusing Obama of misleading voters by saying it has not been his life’s ambition to be president, even though, as a child, he wrote a paper about wanting to be president.
Obama’s remark was also a reference to Clinton’s refusal to release many of her papers from her time as first lady.
For many in the audience, yesterday was the first political event they had ever attended. Damon Luke, 31, was born and raised in The Bronx but now lives in Columbia, said he was sold. “He’s the first candidate that’s ever related to me,” he said.
churt@nypost.com