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COMPTON — Gov. Gray Davis rallied enthusiastic supporters in this working-class, heavily minority town south of Los Angeles Thursday as part of a final re-election campaign push to shore up his Democratic base. 

“I come to Compton, as I have many times before, to thank you for supporting us through thick and thin,” Davis told about 80 volunteers who gathered with cheers and signs in a parking lot outside a strip mall that houses a Democratic Party field office. 

Davis told the crowd that during his four years in office he has aimed to make life better for them, and he warned that Republican Bill Simon would undo that progress. 

“It’s down to this — I want to continue to move this state forward for all people. He wants to move it back and to the right,” Davis said. 

“Let’s keep working for five more days and we’ll have four more years of progress,” he said. 

Inside the headquarters a handful of volunteers dialed up Democrats to get them to the polls, a key aim for both parties in an election where turnout is expected to be low. 

Davis appeared with local officials including former Congressman Mervyn Dymally, now a state Assembly candidate, and U.S. Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald, D-Carson. 

“Simple Simon will return to where he came from,” Millender-McDonald told the crowd. 

Blacks are traditionally one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable constituencies. Davis pulled in 76 percent of the black vote in 1998 and he got one of his warmest receptions of the campaign trail Thursday as his listeners mobbed him for autographs and snapshots and chanted “Four more years!” 

“There are clear choices in the governor’s race. This is not a gray election. This is a black or white election,” Davis said, citing his support for abortion and gun laws, areas where Simon’s views are notably more conservative. 

Davis later rallied about 100 Democratic volunteers in Long Beach. 

“These are real choices before the electorate and we are just trying to galvanize the people who in turn galvanize the troops,” Davis said. 

The governor then called a handful of voters on the volunteers’ lists and spoke to a husband and wife named Dottie and Chuck, explaining his handling of the energy crisis. 

He told reporters he had just learned that the couple’s “lights never went out.” 

Simon, meanwhile, was joined on the campaign trail in Santa Monica by Jack Kemp, the former congressman and U.S. housing secretary. He campaigned on a business theme, meeting with about 30 small-business executives. 

The round-table was closed to reporters at the last minute, which Simon campaign traveling press secretary Craig Turk blamed on miscommunication. That left the candidate shut inside an office building away from a bank of TV cameras that could provide badly needed publicity in the campaign’s final days. 

Simon told reporters going in that job creation and business-friendly policies would be central to his administration.