On Sunday November 23, I attended a fundraiser for Georgia Democrat for US Senate Jim Martin. It was held at the Mason Murer Fine Art Gallery, which is built into an old warehouse or factory in an industrial section of town.
I arrived just before the 7PM scheduled start time. I'd never been on that street before but I gauged that I'd better park on the end of the line of cars on the street - I was well out of sight of the Gallery but I knew I had to be in the right place by virtue of the various Obama stickers on the cars I walked past.
The Gallery is not much to look at on the outside but on the inside it's a very attractive facility with a number of interesting works about. There was a clot of people centered in one area and I figured that that was where Jim Martin and Al Gore would appear; there was a separate private meet-and-greet going on for the big donors but I'm not sure if that was going on before or after their appearance out in the open.
There were at least two TV remote trucks there; set back behind the milling throng was a rectangular platform for press cameras. I observed that places on the platform had been labeled and especially noteworthy was that there was a spot for Telemundo, the Spanish-language channel headquartered in Miami.
After a time, Jim Martin and Al Gore appeared to loud applause. Martin spoke first and introduced Gore.
Gore went into his stump speech and was very active and animated. His primary point seemed to be the corrosive influence of money in Washington. This seemed to be to be a bit of preaching to the choir; I feel like Gore's remarks could have been better adjusted to the audience. Perhaps he could have focused more on, say, energy independence or climate change and talked about how Martin's presence in the Senate could help the country in that regard.
There were plenty of people on hand; here is just one section of the audience:
After the speech, WSB-TV was doing interviews; that's their on-air talent with her back to the camera, holding the microphone:
Later I met Jim Martin, asking him the ever-popular "How are you holding up?", which got a chuckle. Not an unreasonable question for someone who likely never dreamed that he might end up in a runoff against Saxby Chambliss.
Speaking of whom, it was meaningful for former US Senator from Georgia Max Cleland to appear, since it was Cleland that was smeared so mean-spiritedly by Chambliss (recall that of that ad, Chambliss stumper John McCain himself said "I'd never seen anything like that ad. Putting pictures of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden next to the picture of a man who left three limbs on the battlefield -- it's worse than disgraceful. It's reprehensible.") Wow, practicing hypocrisy at that level really has got to age somebody - maybe even make them pick pathological demagogues as running mates...
Meanwhile, observe Saxby Chambliss getting to first base with his granddaughter in this campaign ad: