Welcome to the final travelogue entry of Crashing the States!
It has been a fascinating journey across America, and in a diary to be posted soon I will do my best to recap and summarize the entire experience, which has been exhilarating, eye-opening and enlightening beyond anything I could have imagined. I will also post eventually about our time in San Diego and Las Vegas--I'm not abandoning those--but the work of preparing for election day, traveling and attending the events made posting diaries a little difficult. Also, I was recently hospitalized for food poisoning, so that set me back a couple of days--but I'm feeling better now and ready to get back at it.
In a future diary, I will write about what's in the works next for the project, and what I'm intending for the time and investment that so many of you put into this project to lead to in the near future.
But first, I figured I'd share with you all our experience at what I am sure will be my fondest political memory for some time to come:
JIM WEBB'S VICTORY PARTY!!
Follow below the fold for photos and commentary!
Update by hekebolos at 12:15pm: to see more photos, see hcc in va's
flickr page.
I must say that in certain respects during the course of our adventure, we've been the beneficiaries of some pretty fortuitous happenstances. In a lot of cases, certain things just happened to take place right when we happened to be in town--Brian Keeler's second blograiser, or the Chicago blogger meetup, just to name a few examples. But I have to say that making the decision to fly back to Virginia for election day and be there in person for the finale of what ended up being the most closely watched race in the country--the race that gave the Democrats control of the Senate--has to supercede any other experience I've had on this trip for the sheer exhilaration of it.
Gary and I took a red-eye flight out of Los Angeles to DC. We got in Sunday morning and met up with our original cameraman A.J.--or, as we call him around here, pelagos.
To be completely honest, I have no memory of what the heck we even did on Sunday. I know that we stopped by campaign headquarters and met our host for our second stay in Virginia--Wasim, who headed up Webb's local outreach for Virginians of Arab descent.
Actually...wait...it's coming back to me now. Yes.
We left HQ and had Sunday brunch with teacherken at a sports bar right next to HQ. Seemed like we were the only table that was discussing politics and not football that given Sunday--but we were regaled with stories about Jim's entry into the race and a whole host of other issues related to Virginia politics. teacherken is so full of stories--he's an old hand around here.
Now, back to my original ignorance. I have no idea what happened after that. Something about being interviewed by Swedish media at Webb HQ. I know that happened, but I can't really tell you much else about Sunday.
On Monday was Webb's final campaign event--the rally in Alexandria with President Clinton. About 6,000 people crowded the plaza in front of Alexandria's City Hall to see the event. By contrast, Allen's election eve concluded with a rally in Richmond with Senator John Thune--attended, by all reports, by about 250 people.
Gary, A.J. and I were officially credentialed media for the event, so we got good access for our cameras:
It went without saying that there were plenty of familiar faces in the crowd--like teacherken and Lowell (Webb's internet coordinator, who posts here as lowkell).
President Clinton wasn't the only guest of honor. You want star power? I'll show you star power--especially for Virginia!
At the podium, of course, is Governor Mark Warner. Behind him are Sens. Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer, Pres. Bill Clinton, Sen. Bob Kerrey, and Governor Tim Kaine (in the leather jacket). Behind them, with his face obscured, is Jim Webb.
President Clinton gave the best speech I've ever heard him give--catering to Webb's message, it was lined with a heavy dose of economic populism. There's a YouTube video of the whole 11-minute speech--you can see it here. Two choice quotes:
Yeah, it's class warfare. My class is winning, and I don't like it.
Now, this is their campaign. Pretend I'm their guy: "Yeah, we've made some mistakes...but my opponent is a slug. And he'll tax you into the poorhouse. And on your way to the poorhouse, you'll see a terrorist on every corner. And when you try to run away from the terrorist, you'll trip over an illegal immigrant." Well, isn't that it?
Despite whatever problems Clinton had, it still makes me long for the days of his presidency.
After the rally we went out for dinner and drinks to with the crew of Forward Together at a place called Bilbo Baggins. I kid you not. The place is actually called Bilbo Baggins. And now I'm going to prove it.
AND NOW FOR THE VICTORY PARTY!!!
Earlier in the day we had stopped in at HQ and talked to Josh Chernilla, the campaign's volunteer coordinator (and one of the founders of Raising Kaine) to check in on how the election day flushing was going. We were told that the campaign was meeting its goals in most of the precincts it was targeting in Northern Virginia, and that they were expecting a victory based on the turnout numbers they were seeing--though I don't think anyone expected it to be this close! Still, everyone was optimistic as we headed to the victory party--including teacherken, who sat down with me and made a prediction (dependent on what happened with the Senate races!) of how many House seats the Democrats would take. TK, I don't remember exactly--was it 35 that you said? Help me out here...
Once again, we had a position on the media riser for the event--and at that point it was just a matter of following CNN on the big screen and watching the returns come in. And initially, the returns that came in were favorable to the campaign, and had the crowd that had filtered in rather upbeat:
(Webb 50%, Allen 49%, around 575,000 votes counted))
But later on in the evening, the enthusiasm displayed by the crowd for the Democratic success in House races nationwide was becoming tempered by the fact that Allen took a lead in the returns as the evening progressed. Still, nothing could prevent an atmosphere of raucous celebration when CNN called the 15th Democratic pickup needed to change power in the House, and make the projection: DEMS WIN HOUSE:
Still, as the night waned, the crowd started getting a little more agitated and restless. I tracked down teacherken, who told me that much of their expected margin of victory of 4-5% was based on winning 70% of the vote in Arlington county, and a smaller percentage in Fairfax, but that Webb was only winning with 66% of the vote in Arlington, which would make for an extremely tight race. Still, as we looked at the election returns, it was obvious that a majority of the outstanding precincts that hadn't reported yet were from bluer areas, and that was giving some life to the audience--especially since the same thing got reported on CNN a little while later.
Jim Webb came to the podium around 11:00 (I think it was, but checking my watch was the last thing on my mind!) to announce that most of the remaining outstanding votes were from counties that supported him, and that he was confident of overcoming the deficit and winning the election. Many of us were wondering whether he actually believed what he was saying, or whether he was positioning himself strategically for a recount, should one become necessary. And as the night continued to wear on, the prospects for victory looked increasingly unlikely, as Allen was maintaining a consistent, if slight, lead of around half a percentage point as the final returns came in.
AND THEN--ABSOLUTE BEDLAM!!!!
The vote flipped.
The McCaskill-Talent race in MO-Sen had become, by that point a focus of attention for CNN, along with the TN-Sen race, and at one point, CNN's camera showed a wide-angle shot of the graphic of the "firewall" Senate races--and the graphic showed Webb up 50-49. Someone in the crowd yelled, "hey! Did you see that?" And then, five seconds or so later, came the announcement from Wolf Blitzer that Webb had, in fact, taken the lead in the race!
As an officially credentialed member of the media (strike one for the blogosphere!) I had access to the stage, and immediately ran up to get a shot of the pandemonium below. What a sight that was! It's one of those memories I won't soon forget.
And now, for a funny story about the Fox News correspondent! We happened to be right next to the guys from Fox News on the media riser. A bunch of people in the media section had their laptops out, checking the State Board of Elections website for the latest updates. Apparently, CNN and the SBE we're getting the exact same vote totals at the same time, because the results were always a little off of each other--and at that late stage, it appeared the CNN was getting its updates more frequently than the SBE's site was updating itself. So when Webb finally took the lead according to CNN, the SBE's website was still showing Allen ahead. And the Fox News guy was sitting there, confused, constantly refreshing the SBE site on his laptop. I couldn't really hear what he was saying, but the look of confused angst was pricless! Here he is, reporting live shortly after the Webb lead was announced.
As I'm sure you know, Jim came onstage again a short time later to essentially declare victory--and A.J. and I were standing just a few feet away with our cameras out:
We tarried for a little while longer after that, though the crowd began to come down off its high and filter out--mainly, we were following CNN and watching the last dregs of the returns coming in to see how well the lead would hold up, as well as tracking the results of some of our other favorite CTS candidates from across the country, including Jon Tester, who was also locked in an equally tight race. It was also right around then that I started tracking the results in one of my hometown state races--Debra Bowen, running for Secretary of State in California against Bruce McPherson. And thankfully for the country, Debra won.
We left at about 2:45 in the morning--physically exhausted and emotionally drained from a night never to be forgotten.
I couldn't have dreamed up a better ending to our Crashing the States adventure than being right there firsthand for the victory party of a genuine netroots Senator: Jim Webb.