A day after a weekend that saw nearly 70,000 people pack into venues in three states to hear talk show host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey campaign for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, observers debated whether star power can really fuel a campaign.

Celebrity endorsements are typically used by campaigns to draw large crowds and drive media coverage, but the Obama campaign is taking Winfrey's support to another level by trying to reach everyone who came to see her within 48 hours and get them on board.

It's especially important in Iowa, where the race is tight and just about 7,000 votes decided the winner in the last presidential caucus.

"This is going to be a margins election," said Democratic consultant Jenny Backus. "This race is going to go to the campaign that finds new voters to bring into the process."

“Well, I guess we’ll see,” said Prof. Larry E. Davis, director of the Center of Race and Social Problems at the University of Pittsburgh.

“What makes this unique is that no one of her stature has ever done this, no billionaire,” Davis told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “The whole thing is absolutely unique.”

Davis said he also was surprised because much of Winfrey’s work seems to focus on women.

“I hadn’t seen her really do anything for the guys,” he said, noting that people may have believed that Winfrey would have been more inclined to get behind Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) than for the Illinois senator.

“I think it makes a horserace of (the campaign),” Davis said. “…I think everybody is guessing on this one; there’s no scholarship on how this will turn out.”

"Everybody is utilizing their celebrity endorsements, and they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't have an impact," maintained Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the majority whip of the House of Representatives, who is remaining neutral in the primary campaign.

“I think it couldn’t have come at a better time for Obama because he was surging and had some momentum even before this weekend,” said David Bositis, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black think tank in Washington, D.C.

“In the past couple of weeks his poll numbers in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina showed he was ahead in Iowa, ahead but within the margin of error in New Hampshire and ahead within the margin of error in South Carolina. Now you have Oprah, these gigantic crowds and I think this is giving him a boost at a time he was already moving in the right direction,” Bositis told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

Besides the stadium event in South Carolina, which attracted 29,000 people, Winfrey spent the weekend campaigning in Iowa -- where nearly 28,000 people in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids came to out in icy weather -- and New Hampshire for Obama. At the mini-tour's final stop in New Hampshire, about 8,500 people came out to see Winfrey and Obama. Admission for the events didn't cost any money, but it wasn't free. Everyone who entered had to fill out a ticket stub with information on how they could be contacted.

As ticket stubs were collected at the Iowa events Saturday, they were sorted by geographical region. As the rallies ended, volunteer messengers braved icy roads to begin delivering stubs to the 35 offices across the state. Other stubs were scanned into image files and sent via computer.

The Obama campaign said 4,250 people pledged their time in order to get priority tickets to the rallies, agreeing to volunteer at least four hours so they could get a closer view of the Chicago talk show queen and her hometown senator.

“There are those who say it’s not his time, that he should wait his turn. Think about where you’d be in your life you’d waited when people told you to,” Winfrey told the audience in Columbia. “I’m sick of politics as usual. We need Barack Obama.”

Obama, continuing the theme that it is time for change, told the South Carolina audience that pandering to voters was not in their best interest.

“It’s not good enough to tell the people what you think they want to hear instead of what they need to hear,” Obama said. “That just won’t do. Not this time. We can’t spend all our time triangulating and poll-testing our positions because we’re worried about what mitt or Rudy or Fred or the other Republican nominees are going to say about us.”

He said voters will need to cast ballots in favor of a candidate -- not against an incumbent who is leaving office.

The event at Williams-Brice Stadium initially was planned for a smaller venue with a capacity of 18,000, but was moved to the stadium after the campaign gave out all of its free tickets two days after distribution began. Organizers said they did not expect to fill the massive arena, however.

In South Carolina, Obama's people said 68 percent of the nearly 30,000 people who showed up had never communicated with them before. Each person who entered the stadium for the rally was given a list of four phone numbers and first names along with a script for them to deliver in calls they should make asking for support in the upcoming primary.

Jamal Simmons, co-founder of cellular phone marketing firm Cherry Tree Mobile Media, said the calls and the campaign's pitch for audience members to sign up for text messages were smart innovations for a political campaign. He said, "If they got half the people in that crowd to get out their phone and text message, they got 15,000 cell phone numbers that they can send texts to on Election Day telling them to vote, which is a pretty powerful tool."

Steve Hildebrand, a top Obama strategist overseeing the effort, said the events Sunday in South Carolina and New Hampshire were followed by efforts similar to those in Iowa. Volunteers worked late into the night computerizing information from attendees and were able to print telephone call sheets the next day.

Hildebrand, sitting on a couch in the Des Moines office lobby to make way for all the volunteers working the desk phones, said Monday the goal was to put in a call to each of the attendees within 48 hours. Each person gets a thank-you for attending, some discussion of how inspiring the event was and is asked whether he or she will commit to voting for Obama and come in and volunteer. Those who live in Iowa are asked to attend a house party Thursday night near their home, and the callers have the local party address ready for anyone who might be interested.

Obama himself acknowledged that the impressive turnout for the rallies probably had more to do with Oprah than with him. But the campaign relished the chance to have him make his pitch to so many people.

"Getting people in front of Barack is the most beneficial thing we can do for the campaign," Hildebrand said. "The most important aspect was to use it as an organizing tool."

When asked Monday about Oprah's support, other presidential candidates played down the impact of celebrities in politics.

"I know that Oprah Winfrey sells a lot of books," said Republican John McCain, campaigning in South Carolina. "I have the endorsement of four former secretaries of state. I would hope that carries some weight."

"I don't think celebrity is going to sway them much," said Democrat John Edwards, who is bringing actors Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins with him to Iowa later this week.

Democrat Joe Biden agreed that issues will determine the nominee during an appearance on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. But, he added, "I'd love Oprah to be putting 15,000 people in a room for me to give me a chance to make my case to them."

Bositis said Winfrey’s presence makes a difference because she has a different relationship with her audience than other celebrities who have campaigned for candidates in the past.

“It’s been noted that there are a lot of stars that provide endorsements and it doesn’t have any effect,” he said. “Most stars, the relationship they have with their audiences is they’re wanting them to buy tickets and go to their movies. Oprah’s relationship with her audience is she asks people to do things, which is very different,” noting that her recommendation of a book can send sales soaring or that people follow her lead when she endorses a certain diet or encourages people to exercise.

“A lot of people look to her, not just to hear what she has to say, but to have an influence on their lives,” Bositis said. “If anybody would be likely to have an effect, it would be Oprah.”

“I think there is something in that,” said Ronald Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. “There is that action thing in people emotionally committed to her that’s been demonstrated. And why wouldn’t it work in politics?”

Using Winfrey in the Obama campaign, Walters said, “is a carefully honed strategy, and it may work to some extent. (Obama) wants to pull out people -- predominantly women, who haven’t been active politically previously -- so he can talk to them and make his pitch.”

Walters noted that Obama’s campaign also took names and numbers to follow up with attendees.

“These kinds of things (rallies) are notable for minimal impact,” Walters told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “This thing, I think, will have a more notable impact.”

Winfrey alone will not be enough to keep voters in the fold, Walters said. Obama, he said, has to be sure to follow up with those prospective voters and to capitalize on the issues that differentiate him from Clinton, particularly a strong anti-war sentiment.

In October, Clinton voted for a resolution that declared the Iran Revolutionary Guard was a terrorist organization -- a vote she has been trying to defend ever since. President Bush intensified the debate last month when he suggested that if Iran developed any nuclear capability that it could mean World War III, but has had to back off after a recent National Intelligence Estimate reported Iran stopped trying to build nuclear weapons four years ago.

“Women are more opposed to war,” Walters said. “The saber-rattling about Iran might have been the only thing that could account for his surge in Iowa past Hillary.”

But while Oprah’s support may help Obama in his race to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination, Bositis and Davis said the real challenge would be whether her crossover appeal would hold up and make a difference in the general election.

“What I’m fearful of is that conceivably, he could get the Democratic nomination,” Davis said, “but when you throw the whole country in, white women have not been loyal (to Democrats); with affirmative action they voted with (white) men, even though they were beneficiaries.

“Will they stay? (Winfrey) may be about to pull them for the primary, but whether they stay in the general election or vote with their husbands or boyfriends when they go to the polls, I don’t think he can win.”

That said, however, Davis said the widening support for Obama in the primary process, driven in part by Oprah’s broad-based support, was a good thing and that the reception they’ve received on the campaign hustings was also built, in part, by the past presidential campaigns of Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton, who got people thinking about whether they would ever vote for a black candidate.

Voters may not have been ready then to cast their ballots for those particular black candidates, but they did think that there might someday be a black candidate for whom they would vote.

“They have certainly gotten the idea in people’s consciousness, and it becomes, ‘Eventually, I will vote for a black candidate when the right one comes along," Davis told BlackAmericaWeb.com. "It’s a real icebreaker when there’s a real candidate with real money and real backing. (Obama’s campaign) will push forward the possibility.”