"What is the deal here?" Clinton asked, referring bluntly to the fact that Street is in a neck-and-neck race in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

"This is a young, vigorous, brilliant public servant. His heart is on fire for the children of this city. He has all the experience in the world," Clinton told a noontime rally at La Salle University. "Reward his record."

Republican mayoral nominee Sam Katz campaigned yesterday accompanied by a Democratic ally of his own, John White Jr., whose endorsement of Katz was an early coup for the GOP candidate. Throughout the day, Katz, a former Democrat, downplayed the importance of party affiliation and dismissed Clinton's visit.

"Everybody in the city has known for weeks that the Street campaign has needed outsiders to boost its sagging fortunes," Katz said.

Clinton was joined at the La Salle rally by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D., Mass.) and the city's ranking Democratic politicians, ranging from Mayor Rendell to Reps. Chaka Fattah, Robert A. Borski, and Robert A. Brady, Philadelphia's Democratic chairman.

The speakers sought to fire up 5,000 Democrats who packed the invitation-only gathering at the Tom Gola Arena on the university's Olney campus.

Perhaps no one was more fired up than Street himself, a famously controlled politician who went right for the emotional hot button when he recalled shedding tears at age 20 when he learned that John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

During his 25-minute speech, Clinton delighted the gathering by displaying a nuanced grasp of the Philadelphia political scene. In reading up on the mayoral campaign, the President said, he had noticed that some news accounts had described Street as "a good man" held back by an insular personality.

"I don't know who they were talking about," Clinton said, "because the man who introduced me had vision and charisma."

The rally was designed to give Street's candidacy a boost.

In a city with a 4-1 Democratic edge in voter registration, polls show that Street, despite 19 years in City Council, including seven as Council president and partner-in-government with Rendell, is locked in a tight race with Katz. Philadelphia's last Republican mayor left office at the end of 1951.

Clinton and Rendell recalled that Philadelphia delivered 300,000-vote margins of victory for the Clinton-Gore ticket in 1992 and 1996, matching the famous plurality rolled up for John Kennedy in 1960, when the city had many more residents.

"The harder you work between today and Tuesday, the bigger will be the margin of victory," Clinton said.

Street took pains to salute party workers.

"Are there any ward leaders in the house?" he asked at one point.

There were.

The crowd roared as Street depicted Republican legislators in Harrisburg as sitting on a fat budget surplus while Philadelphia schoolchildren are packed 32 to a classroom.

"The Democrats want to deal with the problems of blight and abandonment," Street said. "But the Republicans want to lower taxes."

Street has pledged to continue a Rendell-initiated program of modest cuts in the city wage tax. Katz has called for deeper cuts that would reduce the tax to 4 percent by 2004. Street has said that would tear a hole in the city budget and undermine vital services.

"People want to know that we care about the children, that we want to do something about drugs and crime, about guns and violence," he said.

Rendell, recently named general chairman of the Democratic National Committee, stuck to the same script.

"We've been battling the Republicans in Harrisburg. We've been battling the Republicans in Washington," the Democratic mayor said. "Anyone who thinks somebody with an 'R' next to their names is going to help cities is vastly mistaken."

The mayor said that he and Street had been "the two partners that turned Philadelphia around."

He added: "Suddenly it's election time and people forget about that. But folks, it happened. We're not going to let them rewrite history."

Kennedy, in brief remarks, said: "If you're talking about building on the outstanding record of Mayor Rendell, it's John Street."

The handpicked audience was about two-thirds African American - reflecting the Street campaign's desire to ensure a strong turnout among black voters on Tuesday.

Brady drew one of the biggest cheers of the rally when he addressed head-on the issue of race in the election.

Pointing to his face, Brady criticized voters who might not support Street "because he doesn't look like me."

"That is wrong," Brady said. "We're not going back a hundred years."

The start of Clinton's speech was briefly interrupted by two demonstrators who chanted slogans protesting Naval bombing exercises on an island off Puerto Rico. Clinton was unruffled, telling the audience, "If you ignore them, I will."

Because of Clinton's support for abortion rights, his visit to La Salle, a Catholic university, had prompted some complaints this week from alumni and faculty. When Clinton arrived yesterday, La Salle's president, Brother Michael McGinniss, urged him not to carry out his promised veto of a bill to restrict partial-birth abortions.

Randall Miller, a history professor at St. Joseph's University who studies local politics, said Clinton's appearance could help Street because the President, despite his political travails of recent years, is held in high regard by many African Americans.

"Here, someone who has stood up for blacks is saying, 'You need to stand up for this guy and you need to stand up for yourselves,' " Miller said.

After the rally, Joseph Rauscher, head of the Philadelphia AFL-CIO Council, said he was charged up.

"It shows we can be a fighting family and come together," Rauscher said. "Come Tuesday, you're going to see numbers that surprise people."