Hundreds of supporters of Hillary Clinton packed the north Denver home of former Interior Secretary and former U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar on Monday for an organizing event meant to “catapult” the presidential candidate out of the 2016 caucuses to the Democratic nomination.

“We’ve got to make sure the news coming out of Colorado isn’t just good, it’s really, really good,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper, urging those at the get-together to commit to attending the March 1 Democratic caucuses and, while they’re at it, bring a few neighbors to support Clinton.

Hickenlooper was joined by Salazar, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Lorella Praeli, the national Latino outreach director for the Clinton campaign, along with former Gov. Roy Romer, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb and dozens of current and former elected officials.

They made a case that Clinton isn’t only the strongest candidate — “There’s only one candidate in either party who is ready to be president on day one,” Hickenlooper said — but that she deserves the support of the party’s more liberal wing despite its recent flirtation with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“There is no one, and I mean no one, in this world, on this earth, who has fought more for children, women and families than Hillary Clinton,” said Salazar, who served in the Obama cabinet with the former secretary of state. “She is the champion for the world on these issues.”

It was a point repeated by Villaraigosa.

“I love when people say, you know, ‘I’m a progressive and Hillary’s not.’ Hillary’s been standing for the notion that health care is a right, not a privilege,” he said. “That the only issue should be, how do we get there? She stood up for universal health care when it wasn’t popular. If you think Obamacare isn’t popular today, try back when, in the early ’90s, when she stood up for the notion.”

Noting that he had first visited Colorado nearly 40 years ago, when he was a young labor organizer, Villaraigosa said the state was “critical” to Clinton’s path to the nomination.

“You are among the most progressive Democrats I’ve come across in all the years,” he said, noting he had traveled widely to support Democrats. “This place is the epicenter of real progressive politics.”

Although he had earlier this month garnered headlines for “expressing doubt” about Clinton’s candidacy as the controversy over her use of a private email server mounted, Hickenlooper said he’s a firm supporter.

“I think one of the greatest things about Hillary, you know, she’s getting more and more momentum, more pure velocity — is that she’s also going to make sure we reelect Michael Bennet to the U.S. Senate,” Hickenlooper said, adding, “She’s gonna have coattails.”

Asked to comment about the Republican presidential debate set for two days later in Boulder, Hickenlooper said, “If they talk about immigration here the way they’ve been talking about it in previous debates, it will be a flashpoint, and it won’t just be in the Latino community.”

As for former Republican frontrunner Jeb Bush, Hickenlooper shook his head.

“I think that his campaign has lost a lot of momentum. From my perspective, when you lose momentum in these campaigns, it’s hard to get it back. In the same sense, Hillary Clinton has picked up a lot of momentum in the last month. That’s going to lift her up, not just in the short term but in the long term.”

Days earlier, two of Clinton’s rivals for the nomination, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, had dropped out of the race and Vice President Joe Biden made it official that he wasn’t going to jump in.

As far as the avid following Sanders has been attracting — he tops Clinton in some early-state polling and has drawn many thousands of supporters to campaign rallies — Hickenlooper argued that Democrats will eventually get over their summer fling and throw their support to Clinton.

“Bernie Sanders touches the soul of a lot of Democrats, and he connects with them in a strong way,” Hickenlooper told reporters. “With a certain group of Democrats, he connects very powerfully. But I think in the debate, you really got a sense of who Hillary was. A lot of people who say they really want to support Sanders really didn’t see him as effective or think he’d be as good of a president as Hillary. We’re going to be thoughtful, we’re going to bring people together, then we’re going to move forward.”

— ernest@coloradostatesman.com