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The Admiral spends so much time on the phone talking with people across the country that we rarely have time to prepare for our local endeavors. The good news is, we've got plenty of table volunteers and most of them are DU'ers. Who would've thunk it? :P Another nice thing is that a friend of ours will be having one of his bonfire-potluck evenings where we local liberals, including a goodly number of DU'ers, sit around imbibing and talking politics late into the night around a campfire. We've spent a lot of those evenings planning future actions. For instance, we solicit volunteers and collect donations (we always use the candidate's envelopes) for progressive candidates. We've also planned and later held fundraisers for candidates. It'll be nice to unwind there after Washington Days is over.
I did get to see the Big Dawg, twice, when he was here a few years ago. He was originally scheduled to speak at KU's Leid Center but the 1000 tickets were snatched up in no time. I knew people who started lining up at 2:30 a.m. the day tickets were supposed to be made available (I had the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. shift). Due to the overwhelming response KU moved the talk to Allen Field House so they could seat over 13K but still provide adequate security. They blocked off the north bowl of the fieldhouse, elminating an extra 3,500 seats. The university also set up several close-circuit feeds on campus, in some of the large auditoriums, for people who couldn't get tickets.
Me, my husband and a couple of our friends went to the public speech. Then we decided to see if we could get into the after-speech reception/fundraiser for the Kansas Dem Party where Bill was going after his AFH speech. We can't help ourselves. Our motto is "Often it is easier to get forgiveness than to get permission." It was a $1000 a person reception but we got in as guests of a party muckety-muck (having been the only Dean delegate from Kansas also has its advantages - Kansas loves Dean!). And because Clinton's speech on campus was part of the inaugural events for the Dole Center, Bob Dole popped in at the reception too. Dole knew it was a Dem fundraiser so he came in and introduced Bill then he left. Bill came into the room to a rousing and sustained applause.
There were probably close to forty of us in the room. Gov. Sebelius was there as were close to a dozen state troopers. There were also the usual big donors and big wigs. Big Dawg stood on a small stage, spoke for about fiften minutes, told us to give money to the state party, told a few jokes and then mingled with people on his way to the door. It was a pretty short reception but it was nice to see the Big Dawg up close. He looked very relaxed and, believe me, he was "on" - big time. He was oozing with charm and charisma. The party faithful were not disappointed. As Clinton was leaving, one of the state troopers that we had been chatting with before Bill got ther told us that Bill had to catch a plane and that some of the troopers were escorting him to the municipal airport so he could catch a commuter flight to get him on his flight in KC on time. It was a short event but I'm glad we got to get in (especially since the four of us got in for free).
I doubt we'll get much of a chance to see Clinton at Washington Days in person. Last year at a Washington Days the closest we made it to the speakers was squeezing into one of the overflow rooms to watch Obama over a closed circuit setup. We watched Obama and Kathleen speak and shortly afterward they both came into the overflow room and spent some time talking with us grunts. It was pretty cool. Obama talked a lot about his mother's Kansas roots and thanked us for showing up.
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