Jubilant Obama supporters celebrate victory

Rep. Keith Ellison, DFL-Minn., seemed as energized as if he had just won the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night.

“You believe that one?” said Ellison, talking to a crowd of about a hundred Barack Obama supporters gathered in St. Paul.  “Wait ’till he comes to Minnesota!”

Ellison had reason to be happy.  Obama won the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night, winning 38 percent of the delegates to the state convention and bragging rights in the first major test of the 2008 presidential campaign.  Former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., finished second with 30 percent of delegates, while Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who is Obama’s chief rival for the nomination, finished third with 29 percent.

Ellison was not the only excited Obama supporter.  At one point, the room erupted into an ad-libbed “Obama Hop,” to the tune of the Bunny Hop.

Obama supporter Grace Kelly credited the campaign’s organization with the victory.

“We knew it was pretty much tied going in,” Kelly said.  “This [victory] is organization.”

Rep. Betty McCollum, DFL-Minn., said that Obama’s victory was not the end of the road.

“We’re going to be really busy,” said McCollum.  “It’s going to be all of us working together.”

But McCollum said Obama was a candidate worth backing.

“He speaks with people, not to people,” she said.  “It’s a two-way dialog.  He listens, he thinks, and then he finds a solution.”

The crowd was almost as happy about Clinton’s third-place finish as Obama’s victory.  Clinton has been viewed as the front-runner in this campaign, but with Obama’s victory and Clinton’s finish, it’s possible that has changed.