Obama coming to Boise

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BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama is coming to Boise on Saturday for a public appearance, campaign officials said.

The visit is just three days before Super Tuesday, when 24 states including Idaho hold some form of presidential preference voting contest, mainly primaries or caucuses. Obama, who opened his second Idaho office in Pocatello earlier this month, is in a race for the Democratic presidential nomination with New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Obama spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said details of the visit were still being finalized. But John Foster, the executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party, said Obama's appearance would be open to the public.

Obama had initially scheduled a rally Saturday in Salt Lake City, but campaign officials said they canceled the event and shifted focus to Idaho to avoid conflicting with funeral ceremonies for Gordon B. Hinckley, the 97-year-old president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who died last weekend.

Idaho is considered among the ''reddest'' states in the nation, with many voters sticking to the Republican side of the ticket in previous elections. But Jasper LiCalzi, chairman of the Department of Political Economy at the College of Idaho, said the visit shows Obama isn't taking any delegates for granted in such a close contest.

''Why would Obama come here? There's a number of Western states caucusing on Feb. 5, and he can hit Idaho and make it part of a bigger Western swing,'' LiCalzi said. ''I can't recall any other candidate coming to Idaho this far in the nomination process. There haven't been many presidential candidates who come here, even during general campaigning.''

Obama was the first candidate in the 2008 election to open an office in Idaho. But he's not the only candidate to actively campaign in the state. Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are among those to have visited for private fundraisers, public appearances or both in the past few years. Most of those visits came early, before the nomination process was well under way.

''He has some paid organizers in the state, spending some money here and sending literature out in the mail. So it makes sense to kind of capitalize on what he's already doing by coming here in person,'' LiCalzi said.

It's not hard to make a brief stop in Idaho while visiting other states in the West that are either holding caucuses or primaries Tuesday, such as Utah, Colorado or California, LiCalzi said. The question now is whether the visit will make much of a difference.

''It's going to be a close race, so even though Idaho only has 23 delegates, they're important,'' LiCalzi said. ''Next Tuesday when you have CNN and everybody reporting on it, they're going to be saying, 'Here's the states that Obama won and here's the states that Clinton won.' When they show that map graphic on the screen, Idaho looks like a big state.''

Idaho's 23 Democratic delegates include five so-called ''superdelegates'' - elected or party officials who won't be bound to vote according to the outcome of the state caucuses, but who can vote their will at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in late August. At least two of those superdelegates - national committeewoman Gail Bray and national committeeman Grant Burgoyne - have already said they're voting for Obama. Idaho Democratic Party Chairman Keith Roark and vice chairwoman Jeanne Buell have not publicly said who they would vote for, and the fifth superdelegate won't be selected until June at the state convention.

Chani Wiggins, who normally works as a spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., but is volunteering for Obama until next Tuesday's contests, said Obama's national campaign is devoting an undisclosed amount of financial resources to what has until now been a largely volunteer effort in Idaho. Paid field organizers started arriving three weeks ago.

The close race between Obama and Clinton means every state has to be taken seriously, Wiggins said.

''He's coming here, he couldn't pass up this chance, because every delegate vote is going to count,'' she said. ''That's why the people of Idaho have such influence in this race.''

A Clinton campaign official agreed and said supporters of the New York senator are busy across Idaho to energize turnout at Tuesday's caucuses.

''We're not taking anything for granted in Idaho,'' Kathleen Strand, a Clinton spokeswoman, told The Associated Press.

Strand said the campaign expects to announce Idaho endorsements later this week and is hosting as many as 10 parties Wednesday to encourage voters to caucus. She also said the schedule for Clinton and her husband, Bill, remains fluid and could be altered to accommodate a stop somewhere in the state before Tuesday.

Bill Mauk, the leader of John Edwards' campaign in Idaho, said he was not aware of any plans for Edwards to visit the state.

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