In opening Barack Obama’s acceptance speech during the final night of the Democratic National Convention to more than 30,000 Coloradans, the campaign hopes to strengthen its chances in the battleground state come November, officials said Wednesday.
“We will win Colorado,” said Federico Peña, the Centennial State’s national co-chair for the party’s presumptive nominee.
The Obama campaign announced Wednesday that tickets for half of the more than 60,000 members of the public at Invesco Field at Mile High would go to Coloradans. And by offering most of the rest to residents of the Intermountain West, Obama strategists hope to gain ground in the region’s other battleground states of Nevada and New Mexico.
In total, two-thirds of the so-called community credentials are set aside for Western states.
“Purple states are in play, citizens in those purple states should get the VIP seats at Invesco,” said Robert Eisinger, an expert on politics and presidential polling at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and a witness to the crowd of 72,000 who turned out to see Obama in that city last spring.
“The goal is to mobilize them, excite them, energize them,” Eisinger said.
The massive crowd that turned out in Portland has generated positive images for Obama, and become a high benchmark for politicians, Eisinger said. And the signup process for an event like the Invesco speech gives the campaign tens of thousands of addresses, e-mails and phone numbers and the chance to mobilize volunteers.
The online signup for Invesco tickets at provides ample space to anyone wishing to volunteer for the campaign.
And though officials said Wednesday that volunteering and donating weren’t required, Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, said last month that he sees the event and the application process as an obvious opportunity to recruit volunteers.
Hildebrand also said, and officials repeated Wednesday, that applicants will be screened to make sure they are committed to attending.
Each credential will have a bar code that must be activated prior to arriving at the event. The bar code is intended to help prevent scalping.
“Every single person is going to be a level of seriousness,” Hildebrand said. “You know, ‘Tell us how you’re going to get there from Maine. Tell us how you’re going to get there from Florida. Give us a sense of whether or not you’re really serious about this. If you’re not, we’re going to provide someone else with this.’ ”
The deadline for applying is Tuesday. At that time, officials will start the process of contacting applicants for the screening process. Officials say no background check or other screening process will be conducted.
The campaign is working through the Democratic National Convention Committee to provide the credentials, and the DNCC is setting up a tracking system to monitor which credentials have been claimed.
Starting Aug. 20, any of the rewarded credentials that have not been claimed will be offered to those on a waiting list.
Chuck Plunkett: 303-954-1333 or cplunkett@denverpost.com
