The Obama campaign headquarters opened today in Pensacola, FL, and it was an incredible event. For those of you not familiar with Pensacola, it is in the Florida Panhandle and is one of the most conservative areas in Florida. Pensacola is unfortunately the home of MSNBC's resident goofball, Joe Scarborough, but please don't hold that against us.
I noticed the event in the local newspaper a couple of days ago and decided to go. John Lewis, the civil rights icon and U.S. congressman, was scheduled to speak, and I really wanted the opportunity to see him. I expected to see maybe 50 people or so at a small gathering, but I was pleasantly surprised to see a long line of people when I showed up to the event. There were so many people that showed up that they had to move part of the crowd to another building.
The other building that the overflow crowd was sent to had no air conditioning and very few chairs, but no one seemed to care, even though the temperature is almost 90 degrees today with very high humidity. John Lewis spoke to the crowd in the Obama HQ building first, then he came over and talked to the people in the overflow building. The group in the overflow building had to wait about 30 minutes before John Lewis showed up but some local Obama staffers pumped up the crowd until Lewis came over to speak to the crowd. By the time Lewis showed up, everybody was amped up and cheering really loudly. Everybody was fired up and ready to go. If we can get this kind of support for Senator Obama in a conservative city like Pensacola, we can win this election. We just have to hit the neighborhoods and make sure everyone gets registered to vote, and everyone shows up at the polls.
If someone will give me directions, I will upload some of the photos from the event. Unfortunately, I didn't get a good picture of Congressman Lewis because I was too far from the stage, but I got some pretty good pics of the crowd.