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WILMINGTON, Del. — There are many ways to motivate voters to turn out at the polls. On Monday, Senator Tom Carper of Delaware chose to invoke the “Queen of Disco.”

At a rally for Hillary Clinton the day before Delaware’s primary, Mr. Carper took the stage at a restored theater and asked who in the crowd remembered Donna Summer, the singer and songwriter who died in 2012 at 63.

“One of the great divas!” the senator exclaimed. “Let me hear you say ‘Donna’! ‘Summer’! ‘Diva’! ‘Extraordinaire’!”

Mr. Carper told the crowd that they were going to channel Ms. Summer. He brought up her 1983 song “She Works Hard for the Money,” reciting a close approximation of the lyrics: “She works hard for the money, so hard for the money, she works hard for the money, so we better treat her right.”

Mr. Carper, a three-term senator and former governor of Delaware, instructed the crowd to follow his lead.

“So we better…” he said.

“Treat her right,” the crowd replied.

“Tomorrow, we’re going to treat her right,” Mr. Carper said. “Are we going to treat her right on Election Day in November? And you know what, if she’s elected — and I think she will be — she will treat this country right.”

Mr. Carper, who spoke before Mrs. Clinton took the stage, was not finished.

“Like she’s done as secretary of state, she will work hard for the money,” he added. “And when she was the first lady, she worked for eight years for no money. For no money!”

Mr. Carper did not mention Mrs. Clinton’s time after she was secretary of state.

As Senator Bernie Sanders has pointed out, Mrs. Clinton earned enviable sums giving paid speeches. It is not clear how hard she worked for that money.