Obama rallys Patrick’s base

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

President Barack Obama greets Gov. Deval Patrick at a rally for Patrick at the Hynes Convention Center.

The Patrick campaign is declaring President Obama’s stump speech on Saturday more affective than the one he gave for Martha Coakley before she lost her U.S. Senate bid to Scott Brown.

The campaign said yesterday that their get-out-the-vote effort surged after Obama’s visit. The campaign claims more than 7,500 new volunteers signed up after the event, which they called the largest grassroots get-out-the-vote effort in state history.

A crowd of 15,000 gathered at the Hynes Convention Center 17 days before voters choose between Patrick, Republican Charlie Baker, independent Tim Cahill and Green Rainbow candidate Jill Stein.

“The reason this is important is because all of you got involved in 2006 and 2008 because you believed that we’re at a defining moment in our history,” Obama said on Saturday. “You believed this is a time when the decisions we make about the challenges we face, they’re not just going to affect us. They’re going to affect the lives of our children and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren.”

METRO