Obama Rallies Supporters for Deval Patrick Campaign

Sitting backstage at political events, awaiting his turn at the podium, the President of the United States of America is quite often on his Blackberry.

He admitted as much to thousands of supporters gathered at the Hynes Convention Center Saturday morning for a joint rally with Deval Patrick, but said the Massachusetts Governor has a knack for keeping his attention.

"When Deval speaks, I listen," he said.

Obama was the last in a long line of politicians to speak at Saturday's event, which heralded Democratic decisions for putting the state on the road to recovery despite Republican efforts to derail them.

"None of this is happening by accident," Patrick said. "It's happening because of the choices we made. Our opponent would make very different choices."

Obama: "D" for Drive, "R" for Reverse

Obama compared Democrats' work in the past several years to pushing a car out of a ditch while Republicans "[sit] up there fanning themselves."

"Finally, we've got this car on level ground….and the Republicans say, 'can we have it back?'" he said incredulously. "Massachusetts, they can't have the keys back, they don't know how to drive!"

"You want to go forward, you put it in 'D,' you want to go backwards, you put it in the 'R,'" Obama said, grinning. "It's an interesting coincidence."

AIDS Activists Interrupt Rally

The lone interruption during the two-hour rally came from a group of AIDS activists who momentarily drowned out the President with a counter-chant asking for funding for AIDS research. Following the rally, dozens of students chanted and held signs accusing Obama of ignoring his campaign promise to spend $50 billion on AIDS research by 2013. According to Krishna Prabhu of the Harvard AIDS Coalition, the President has spent just $6.9 billion since taking office.

"He has broken his promise to fund AIDS," Prabhu said. "And because [of that], people are being turned away [from clinics]."

The activists could be heard for about 15 seconds during the rally before Patrick supporters drowned them out, resuming their chant, "Four more years…" Hundreds of blue signs asking voters to text 'GOTV' to 89800 waved through the air.

Baker, Cahill Out Campaigning Too

Both Obama and Patrick emphasized the importance of the November 2 election, which will pit Patick against Republican candidate Charles Baker and Independent Timothy Cahill. Both of Patrick's opponents were busy campaigning on Saturday - Baker at the Waltham Sons of Italy and Cahill at the College of the Holy Cross and the Millenium Park anniversary in West Roxbury.

"There are real needs and real people's lives at stake," Patrick said. "Are we going to be satisfied or are we going to finish what we started?"

Exiting the rally, one student said she came to the event to "see the other side." Television ads from the Baker and Cahill campaigns are commonplace she said, while the Patrick campaign hasn't seen as much screen time.

Patrick Supporter Seeks Equal Rights

For Ian Harris Struthers, a Fisher College student who lives in Back Bay, the rally didn't change his allegiance to the current governor.

"Deval's a great speaker," he said. "He would have had my vote whether he brought Obama to town or not."

The President's commitment to preserving social security hit home for Struthers, whose mother currently collects the benefit. What he and other members of Join the Impact want to see next is equal rights for men and women of all sexual orientations across all 50 states.

"I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen," said Struthers, who waved a long yellow banner outside the convention center. "There are 29 states where I can be hired and fired based on my sexual orientation."