"Oprah rally with Obama in South Carolina moved to football stadium"

Boston Herald:

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has moved a campaign rally with talk show host Oprah Winfrey to a football stadium that can hold more than 80,000 people, officials said Wednesday.

Obama’s campaign has said it had already filled a planned Dec. 9 event with Winfrey at the Verizon Wireless Arena in Manchester, N.H., which holds about 12,000 people.

The South Carolina event had been scheduled for an 18,000-seat coliseum near the University of South Carolina campus, but the campaign ran out of the free tickets just two days after it began distributing them. Tickets will no longer be needed.

"We wanted to make sure everyone in South Carolina who wanted to see Barack Obama and meet Oprah Winfrey had the opportunity," said Inez Tenenbaum, an Obama supporter and former state schools superintendent. "Everyone can attend who wants to attend."

The campaign doesn’t expect to fill Williams-Brice Stadium, where college football coach Steve Spurrier and his Gamecocks play on fall Saturdays. But with the attention the event has drawn, and temperatures forecast in the 70s, officials are expecting a large crowd.

Obama’s campaign said thousands of people called after the tickets for the coliseum all had been distributed.

"I have been called at my house," Tenenbaum said. "Everywhere I go, my friends say, ’I didn’t get a ticket.’"

Doors will open at 12:30 p.m. and the program is to begin two hours later.

Barack Obama