Former President Bill Clinton's campaign swing through Washington state, with speeches for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton in Spokane and Vancouver, took a detour Monday through downtown Portland.

Clinton showed up at Powell's flagship bookstore to meet Gov. Kate Brown and shake hands.

"We need to go back to a country where we can argue together," he told one group. He also talked about Oregon in particular, saying the nation needs politics "more like it is here."

The former president squeezed in the appearance before heading across the Columbia River for a speech at Clark College, where he touched on themes of job and small business growth, clean energy and college debt and affordability before an overflow audience of more than 1,000 people.

As Clinton waded into the crowd at the bookstore, spending close to an hour greeting people alongside Brown, Hillary Clinton's campaign announced an endorsement from Brown in the Democratic race.

The highly public appearance alongside the former president was good for Brown, too: She's running this fall for the right to finish former Gov. John Kitzhaber's term.

Brown, in a statement, called Hillary Clinton "the fighter Oregon families need in the White House." She also referenced Clinton's call for the country to embrace Oregon's first-in-the-nation automatic voter registration system, an initiative pushed by Brown when she was Oregon's secretary of state.

"Hillary and I share a bold, progressive agenda that aims to break down the barriers that hold working families back and ensures that everyone has the same opportunity to succeed," Brown said. "Hillary has spent her career fighting to advance civil rights for all Americans and working towards real solutions to the issues that keep Oregonians up at night."

Bill Clinton was expected in Vancouver at 5 p.m., but didn't leave the bookstore until 4:55. At one point, he stopped to sign a copy of his biography, "My Life," offered by an 11-year-old from Fresno, Calif., who was visiting Portland during spring break for her birthday.

Sydney Sabourin and her father had left the store after loading up two carts with books. Sydney had gone back in to use the restroom when she heard Clinton was coming. Her father reminded her that they had seen a copy of Clinton's biography in the store's rare books room.

She ran upstairs to snag the copy just in time to get the man himself to dedicate it: "To Sydney - Good luck in

your

life - Bill Clinton 3/21/16."

"I know his wife is running for president," the girl said. "She seems to be one of the main candidates."

Onlookers had jammed close to the bookstore's main entrance after seeing Portland police officers and U.S. Secret Service agents milling about and making rounds.

When Brown jokingly asked one boy who he thought was coming, one of her aides said, the boy said her name, not realizing he was talking with the governor. Once Clinton arrived to cheers at 4:09 p.m., taking off his glasses as he hit the room, he made his way slowly through the crowd.

He asked some people about books they read. He shook hands, signed slips of paper and bookmarks and posed for pictures. In front of television cameras, he spoke about his fondness for cherry pie, the need for civility in modern American politics and talked about the two times he asked Hillary Clinton to marry him.

"Marry me," he said he told her. "But you really shouldn't do it."

Brown, noting the setting inside Portland's iconic bookstore, told onlookers later that Clinton kept commenting on the books surrounding him.

"We were going by the racks," she said, "and he knows all of the titles."

On his way out, a woman asked a Secret Service agent whether the former president was heading for a treat -- like, maybe, Salt & Straw, a la Joe Biden -- on his way to his next stop.

"Is he going to get ice cream?" she said. "I know he likes ice cream."

Ana Meng Canseco-Spiers, 18, was among the dozens who shook Clinton's hand and ran off to marvel about it with a fellow shopper. "We were just standing there," she said, "and then he walked up."

Earlier in the day, Clinton appeared at Spokane Falls Community College -- kicking off two days of visits by the couple ahead of Washington's Democratic caucuses Saturday. Hillary Clinton has events in Seattle and Everett on Tuesday.

Both Clintons are following Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke to a crowd of thousands Sunday at Hudson's Bay High School in Vancouver and then made trips to Spokane and Seattle.

Washington and its 118 delegates have become a bigger prize than usual with the race among Democrats still in flux.

Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and U.S. senator, remains on track to claim the Democratic Party's presidential nomination -- building a formidable lead in the race to win 2,383 delegates fueled by big victories in Southern states.

She's won 1,147 delegates from voters and earned 467 more from Democratic superdelegates, party leaders and elected officials who are free to choose candidates without being bound by voters' wishes.

But Sanders' populist campaign has resonated in an election year dominated by political outsiders, including Republican front-runner Donald Trump, and extended a contest many observers thought would have ended by now.

The Clintons' combined attention on Washington shows they're not taking their delegate lead for granted.

Sanders played on those themes Sunday, saying "the American people know that we have some very serious crises, and these crises are not going to be solved by establishment politics."

But as resolute as Sanders and his supporters remain, fresh losses this month in big Midwestern states mean he'd need to win support from at least three-fifths of voters in every remaining contest to eke out the nomination.

The Oregonian/OregonLive's Stephanie Yao Long contributed to this report.

-- Denis C. Theriault

503-221-8430; @TheriaultPDX