Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama and U.S. Senator Dick Durbin attracted a crowd of more than 1,000 people Sunday at Hopkins Park in DeKalb.

DeKalb County Board member Steve Slack said the Democrats’ rally was the largest they’ve ever had in the county.

“This county voted for Dick Durbin in the last election,” Slack said. “Barack Obama got 70 percent of the vote in the primary here. Folks here have pretty independent thinking, and they no longer say, ‘Well, it’s a Republican county.’”

“I’m really proud of that, and I think we are going to have a tremendous election this fall,” Slack said.

Obama spoke of his recent popularity and thanked the crowd and organizers for their support.

“The working assumption was that if it was a black candidate, whites wouldn’t vote for him; if it was a city candidate, suburbanites wouldn’t vote for him; or if it was a metropolitan-area candidate, downstate wouldn’t vote for him,” Obama said. “What we did was we confounded the conventional wisdom. I say ‘we’ because it wasn’t me that did it. It was you that did it. There was a group of us that rose up in Illinois and said, ‘That’s not how we think.’”

DeKalb’s 3rd Ward Alderman Steve Kapitan said Obama has captured the imagination of the county.

“I know the Democratic Party is growing in DeKalb, but I also suspect that there [were] a few curious Republicans here interested in hearing more from Barack Obama.”

Obama brought the crowd at the bandshell to its feet on several occasions and received heavy applause when he suggested that a new system of funding public schools is needed.

Obama said he has approached November “not campaigning against someone, but for issues.”

Obama is the only candidate in the U.S. Senate race at this point, with Republicans expected to announce their candidate today.

Obama, an Illinois senator representing Chicago’s South Side, delivered the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention less than a week ago in Boston and was propelled into the national spotlight.

“If anyone heard his speech at the convention, I think they know why he is a good candidate,” said Eileen Dubin, DeKalb Democratic Party chairwoman. “He has passion; he cares about people, and I think he will do a terrific job.”

Obama and Durbin are visiting 39 communities in Illinois over the next five days. After leaving DeKalb, the campaign’s motor home headed for Rockford, where candidates spoke to a crowd of about 600 people.