WALKER HELPS PACK VIRGINIA PARK WITH 23,000 TO SEE MCCAIN, PALIN

South Carolina’s own Trey Walker, who is serving GOP presidential nominee John McCain as his regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic, was the mastermind behind Wednesday’s enormous .

Here’s what The National Review’s Byron York wrote about the event:

When McCain and running mate Sarah Palin appeared this morning at Van Dyck Park, in the city of Fairfax, Virginia, the people spilled out of the natural amphitheater, over the sides, out the back, and nearly all the way to the Old Lee Highway.

The rally had originally been scheduled for Fairfax High School, but some school board members objected. With controversy brewing, the McCain campaign moved the event to the park.

It was a good idea; the high school facility could handle 6,500 people, which would have been a huge crowd in pre-Palin days. But today, the school wouldn’t have been nearly big enough.

After the rally, McCain officials told me 23,000 people had been there. Even if that estimate was a little high, it was still McCain’s biggest rally ever — and that, at mid-morning, on a weekday.

I guess that makes Walker a “community organizer” like Democrat Barack Obama — and quite a successful one, at that. Maybe he should run for president in eight years.