With a new American Future Fund poll showing Mitt Romney with a one-point lead in liberal Minnesota, Paul Ryan went to the state President Barack Obama won by more than 10 percentage points in 2008 and drew a crowd of nearly 9,000 people on Sunday.
A source who was at the event told Breitbart News Minnesota GOP Chair Pat Shortridge announced 9,000 people were in attendance, and Ryan said another 1,000 people had to be turned away because the venue was filled to capacity.
Ryan’s campaign appearance in Minnesota represents how the Romney campaign is aggressively playing offense on Obama’s electoral turf to expand the electoral map. Obama has spent the last weeks of the campaign on defense, trying to hold onto states — like Minnesota and Wisconsin — he comfortably won in 2008 and were once included in the campaign’s baseline of states guaranteed to go into Obama’s electoral column,
According to NBC News, it was Ryan’s largest solo event to date.
“We could use your help, Minnesota. How about it? What do you say?” Ryan said. “Look at this: Vikings for Romney-Ryan. Even Vikings fans and Packers fans can lie down together for this country.”
Ryan also said as he traveled around the country people have often thought he was from Minnesota.
“People say ‘Oh yeah, Ryan, you’re that budget guy from Minnesota, right?’,” Ryan said. “I say, ‘No I’m from Wisconsin, close. We’re the Catholic deer hunters; they are the Lutheran deer hunters.'”
Minnesota also has a gay marriage initiative on the ballot on Tuesday, and this may bring out enough Evangelical voters to tip the state in Romney and Ryan’s favor in a close contest.
NBC News political reporter took the photos below and posted them to her Twitter account.
Here is another photo from Michelle Venturo on Twitter:
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