"Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama may be ahead in the polls nationally and in Virginia, but New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has one piece of advice for Obama’s Charlottesville-area supporters: The election isn’t over yet.

“I sense a growing momentum, but I have a message for you,” Richardson told a crowd Friday at Charlottesville’s Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Arts Center. “Don’t take this election for granted.”

Richardson appeared in Charlottesville as part of the Obama campaign’s last-minute push to carry Virginia in Tuesday’s election.

Virginia has not backed a Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, but it is considered a toss-up state in this year’s race between Obama and Republican John McCain.

“Do you realize that if Virginia goes Democratic for Obama, that’s history?” Richardson asked.

Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, is the latest in a string of high-profile surrogates who have stumped in the area for Obama or McCain in recent days. On Wednesday, McCain’s 96-year-old mother dropped by the GOP’s Albemarle County campaign headquarters to pump up supporters. Google CEO Eric Schmidt advocated for Obama on Thursday at the University of Virginia School of Law.

The top issue in the presidential campaign, Richardson said, has become the economy.

If elected, he said, Obama would work to implement a wide array of proposals to boost the economy. Richardson said that Obama plans to: end the war in Iraq, saving an estimated $20 billion a month that could be put toward education, health care, support for veterans and the war in Afghanistan; create a New Deal-style agency to create jobs for people who would rebuild the nation’s broadband, highway and electrical infrastructure; cut taxes for 95 percent of the middle class; expand pre-school for every child; offer a $4,000 incentive to go to college, in exchange for a commitment of community or military service; and seek energy independence, with a goal of creating thousands of new “green” jobs.

“This is what Obama wants to do,” Richardson said. “In other words: change. In some cases, dramatic change.”

Alongside Richardson at Friday’s event was Tom Perriello, a Democrat running against six-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr., R-Rocky Mount.

Perriello wished the crowd a happy Halloween. A few members of the audience, which included Charlottesville High School students, wore costumes. There was a Little Bo Peep. Another was dressed as a princess.

“I was going to get that image that congressman Goode uses of me in his ads as my Halloween mask,” Perriello joked. “That might be a little too scary. There’s young people here.”

If elected to Congress, he added, he would aim to be work to put results ahead of partisanship in the manner of former Gov. Mark R. Warner and Obama.

“We have a chance to write a new chapter in Virginia’s history, but it will not write itself,” Perriello said. “Let’s wake up on Nov. 5 knowing that we’re in the dawn of a new era in American history.”" (Brian McNeill, The Daily Progress, October 31, 2008)