First Lady Michelle Obama delivered an impassioned defense of the Democratic record while urging a crowd of volunteers to help revive some of the magic that swept her husband, President Barack Obama, into office six years ago, at a campaign rally in Denver on Thursday for U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, who is facing a neck-and-neck battle with Republican U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner in a bid for a second term.

“Make no mistake about it, if you all want a senator who truly shares your values and will keep on standing up for you and your families every day out there in Washington, then you need to do everything in your power to reelect Mark Udall as your senator,” Obama told the crowd of some 1,200 enthusiastic supporters at the Exdo Event Center in the city’s Upper Larimer neighborhood. “We’ve got to get this done, and I know that we can.”

Obama also rallied a crowd of 1,800 in Fort Collins later that afternoon. She shared the stage in Denver with Udall and U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who heads the national Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette. In Fort Collins, Gov. John Hickenlooper, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis and former U.S. Rep. Betsy Markey, the Democratic nominee for state treasurer, were among the speakers.

While surveys show her husband’s support among voters is underwater in Colorado, the first lady remains a powerful draw, and is among a cavalcade of Democratic heavyweights — figuratively speaking, as Udall drew applause when he introduced her as “the fittest first lady in history” — to troop through the state as the election draws near.

Potential 2016 presidential candidates who’ve touched down in Colorado in the past week include former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. Not to be outdone among the GOP, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made his third appearance in the metro area this week and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is scheduled to appear at a rally for Gardner next week.

Reminding the crowd that the country was “in full-blown crisis mode” with the economy “literally on the brink of collapse,” Obama said that nearly every measure shows that the country is better off today. The country’s private sector has rebounded with more than 10 million new jobs as part of the “longest uninterrupted run of private sector job growth in our nation’s history” and the unemployment rate has tumbled, she said. In addition, high school and college graduation rates are at record highs, and millions of Americans have health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.

She acknowledged that, “we still have plenty of work to do,” but maintained that “we have truly made so much of that change we were talking about.” After crediting Udall — who won election to the Senate the same year as her husband won the presidency — with fighting for jobs, education and equity in the workforce, she made her pitch: “It’s important for you all to be just so clear, that if we want to finish what we all started together, then we need to reelect Mark Udall as your senator.”

Democratic hopes in the purple state — where most recent polls have shown the Senate race knotted up within the margin of error — rest on the campaign’s ability to turn out voters who tend to sit out midterm elections, a task they say could be easier this year with every registered voter receiving a ballot in the mail for the first time.

Saying that Udall’s race is “very, very close, and the entire Senate could come down to Colorado,” Bennet reminded Democrats that he eked out a win over GOP Senate nominee Ken Buck four years ago against similarly strong Republican midterm headwinds.

“It is so close, that this is what I know: If we do what we’re supposed to do, if we do what we know how to do, if we do what we did in 2010, when every single poll said I would not win, we will win the race,” he said. “The only way we’re going to win this race is if we get everybody out to vote. Vote! Vote!” he said, as the crowd took up the chant.

Obama reminded the crowd about the 2010 election, when Democrats lost the majority in the House of Representatives and Bennet was one of only a few Democratic senators in tight races to survive.

“Too many of our people just tuned out,” she said. “And that’s what folks on the other side are counting on this year. Because when we stay home, they win. So they’re assuming that we won’t care. They’re hoping that we won’t be organized and energized. They’re praying that we just stay put, and only we can prove them wrong.”

A survey released on Friday morning by the liberal-leaning Project New America organization contends that pollsters are vastly underestimating how many voters intend to cast ballots in Colorado’s election. According to a poll of voters who sat out the 2010 election or have only registered since the 2012 presidential vote, the poll said that 83 percent of the “presidential surge voters” have already or intend to cast mail ballots this year, and they support Udall by a wide margin.

Colorado Republican Party Chairman Ryan Call took the opportunity of Obama’s visit to echo a familiar litany of the Gardner campaign, describing Udall as being in lockstep with the Democratic president.

“Sen. Udall has made a lot of liberal friends during his time in Washington, but he was sent there to vote for policies that will help our state and our country,” Call said in a statement. “Instead, he has aligned himself with President Obama and the extreme liberal policies of the very people who are now parachuting into our state to bail him out.”

Conservative news sites and blogs pounced when Obama referred to Udall as a “fifth-generation Coloradan” during her remarks in Denver — she dropped the characterization from her speech in Fort Collins two hours later — when it’s Gardner, not Udall, whose roots in the state go back that far. (Udall’s lineage goes back three generations in Colorado.) It was another example of what critics have derided as a gaffe-prone White House campaign operation, pointing to recent incidents in Iowa when Michelle Obama called the Democratic Senate nominee by the wrong name until the crowd corrected Obama and when her press office incorrectly called Iowa’s Senate candidate the state’s gubernatorial nominee.

But at Thursday’s rally, a smiling Hassoni Rahman, who said she has already walked precincts for Democratic candidates and intends to put in more shifts before Election Day, was thrilled to get the chance to see the first lady.

“This is like an early birthday present for me — I just wanted to lay eyes on her,” Rahman said before Obama spoke.

“This woman has reverence. At 60-plus years old, I’m still trying to achieve that. For her to be able to stand up under all this scrutiny and to be a mother and a wife and to be a friend, that is so dynamic. She lends character to us — she’s a role model for me, even though I’m probably old enough to be her mother,” she added with a grin.

— Ernest@coloradostatesman.com