First diary. Be gentle. Crossposted at http://greenjunkie.wordpress.com/
The Obama campaigned opened their office in McCain's backyard today. The office is located in the Roosevelt Historic District in downtown Phoenix. I believed at the time that this was Obama's first office in the Phoenix metropolitan area but I later discovered there is also one up in Scottsdale.
Unlike other major cities, the Phoenix downtown area is rather disappointing with not a lot going on. Several efforts are under way though in the past few years to revitalize the downtown: light-rail, children's museums, etc. The Roosevelt Historic District is a part of those efforts. It's a great place for Obama's office, symbolically.
This was my first campaign event ever (for any campaign). I tried to get there a little early. Much to my surprise the traffic was backed up on 6th street and I had to park three blocks away. When I arrived there were already several hundred folks there.
At 4pm, the stunningly beautiful Nayo Jones performed a few songs (and 'Doc', her father). One, a soulful rendition of Gershwin's Summertime, was out of this world and just [ba]rocked the house!
By now, more folks had filed in and all of local news crews were set up and ready to film. By my (swag) estimates there are now at least 800 people here. Maybe a 1,000. Below is a pic (sorry for the quality, I have a really old camera phone).
What you don't see are a couple hundred folks wrapped around the sides of the stage off to the side. This is 105 degree heat, folks, at 4:30 in the afternoon in the direct sun! And after Nayo's performance we were pretty pumped up (and sweaty).
The first speaker was Don Bivens, our Arizona Democratic Party Chair.
Next up was Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. There were a couple other speakers but I was not able to write down their names or organizations only that they were affiliated to an AZ Democrat Women's organization and ASU.
And finally, the coup de grâce... Janet Napolitano herself! When Janet showed up the place when pretty wild. Janet is pretty popular in Arizona even amongst some Republicans.
(The pics of here came out very bad against the glaring sun so I did not include them)
After the event was concluded quite a lot of people hung around and the Obama folks were signing up volunteers like mad. I, of course, was one of them. I've never worked with a campaign before and I am really excited.
Arizona is not a likely win for Obama but I don't think it's impossible. Polls have it at about 10 points right now. But, a lot of Dems have moved here from neighboring states. AZ Dem registration has outpaced Republican 2-to-1 as well as out fund-raised by 2-to-1. At any rate, we sure as hell are going to make a go of it!
More pics can be found here.