EVERETT — Jerry McGarry hadn’t seen this kind of star power since 1965.

McGarry, a maintenance worker from Clinton, was about 10-deep in a crowd of 2,000-plus that packed a hangar at Paine Field on Monday.

The star attraction? Former Pres. Bill Clinton, who stopped by to stump for U.S. Sen. Patty Murray at a get-out-the-vote rally two weeks before Election Day.

For McGarry, it was the biggest thing since he met Lady Bird Johnson as she made her way through the tiny airport in Sante Fe, N.M. when McGarry was 7.

“It was an honor to see a living president,” McGarry said afterward of the Everett event, which drew a highly partisan but diverse crowd that included union Boeing workers, off-duty firefighters, seniors waving red-white-and-blue Murray signs, dads with their kids on their shoulders, and young men in whiskers and Yankee baseball caps.

Murray is seeking her fourth term and has been running neck-and-neck with Dino Rossi, a two-time Republican candidate for governor and former state senator.

McGarry, though, didn’t need much pep talk from the 42nd president to know who should get his vote.

“I’m a true hard-core liberal,” he said.

“You look at the alternative and it is like, ‘Oh my God, we’d really be in a mess,’” he said of Murray’s opponent.

McGarry was one of the last in line Monday to take a swing at the Rossi pinata.

Rep. Rick Larsen, a Democrat in a tough fight of his own for a seat in Congress against Snohomish County Councilman John Koster, told the crowd that — unlike Rossi — voters could count on Murray to fight for aerospace jobs and needed regulatory reform.

He said it made no sense to have the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers built by Airbus and not Boeing.

“Are you ready to see the label ‘Made in America’ again?” Larsen asked a roaring crowd.

“There is a clear choice this fall. It’s about moving forward, or moving backward. We’re going to move forward on Wall Street reform. Do we need to go backward, and take the referee off the field again?” Larsen asked.

Murray recalled being in Everett more than two years ago when the Pentagon announced the contract to build the tankers would go to Airbus.

“I vowed to make it right,” Murray said. “And I have worked every day since then to have your back.”

“Providing a spark for this region means getting workers here back on the job. I see this state and this region as my family,” Murray said. “And like any tough mom, when my family’s hurting, I don’t hesitate, I go to work and use every ounce of energy I have to make things right again.”

Murray has held the lead and lost it time and again in recent polls, and she’s pulled in plenty of big names to campaign for her in the final weeks of the contest. Vice President Joe Biden has made two visits; President Barack Obama makes a campaign stop in Seattle for Murray on Thursday; and Michelle Obama will visit Bellevue on Monday.

The tight race was a puzzler, Clinton said.

“She’s done a good job for America. She supported Wall Street reform, and the stimulus and the healthcare bill, and student loan reform,” Clinton told the crowd. “But there’s a race. How come?”

Clinton, who took a moment to tout the record budget surpluses of his administration and the millions of jobs created during his two terms, gave the view of the Republican side.

“Their story is: OK, we left America in a big hole. But we gave them 21 months to dig out of the hole. And, they failed. And when they failed, they spent too much money, gave us too much government regulation, had tinges of socialism.

“And what we want to do is undo all that and liberate America,” Clinton said, drawing laughs.

“The worst thing you could do right now is to bring back the shovel brigade and start digging the hole again.”

Clinton said Republicans want to make the election “a referendum about everything that’s bothering you about life right now.”

“Take everything that’s not working for you right now and put Patty Murray’s face on it and make it a referendum,” he said.

“Don’t be fooled, don’t be played, and don’t stay home. You are never going to have anybody who fights harder, better or longer for you than Patty Murray,” Clinton said.

The message resonated with Donna Riley of Langley.

“This election is a choice between two very different alternatives. And rather than people looking at just change for the sake of change, I’m really talking with people about looking at the alternative.

“Do we want to have Wall Street regulated? Do we want healthcare for 40 million Americans? Do we want as many kids as possible to get a college education? Do we want jobs in America and made-in-America products or not?”

Riley, a full-time mother of four, said the rally was the first time she had seen a president up close since Richard Nixon made a campaign stop at Ontario International Airport in California during his reelection campaign.

She was a sophomore in high school, and a Republican, at the time.

“I went to see Nixon because he promised to get us out of the war,” she recalled.

“That was the number one, main reason I supported him. My values haven’t changed, just my party affiliation.”

Of course, it was a little easier to actually see a president then. Stuck on one side of the hangar near a Grumman F6F-5K Hellcat, part of Paul Allen’s collection of World War II aircraft, Riley had to hold her cell phone above her head and watch the video display screen to see Clinton as he talked.

She took to heart Clinton’s message of bridging the so-called enthusiasm gap in the Democratic Party.

“I would really encourage everyone to vote. Don’t believe the pundits,” she said, or mainstream media voices predicting a “Democratic bloodbath.”

“That is their spin and we can change that. We can make a difference,” she said.