Obama in Florida! (with lots o' pics, updated x2)
Wed May 21, 2008 at 03:49:19 PM PDT
This afternoon (21 May 2008), Sen. Barack Obama held a rally in Tampa at the St. Pete Times Forum. I believe that this was his first official campaign event in Florida since fall 2007 and he said that he missed us. As you can see in the pictures below, we missed him too and gave him a warm welcome back to the Sunshine State!
This was also only the second event (other than his Des Moines victory speech last night) after Obama clinched the lead in pledged delegates, a point that he made in his speech. I had daydreams that reaching this milestone might result in a big endorsement from Pelosi and the "club " members (a la Edwards in MI last week), but that did not end up being the case. Oh well -- it was still pretty amazing.
About 12 of us from the University of Florida Gators for Obama group carpooled the 120mi or so down to Tampa and arrived at the venue at about 9:30. This group has been pretty active, phonebanking most weekends during the spring semester and organizing a number of events. In fact, the president of UF Gators for Obama is double majoring in philosophy and Barack Obama. Next fall we will embark on a huge voter registration drive for the incoming UF freshmen (and other students) and cooperate with other local Dem. groups on massive GOTV efforts.
Anyway, back to Tampa.... By the time we arrived, the line was already long and it was getting hot. This was the entrance...
... and the line wrapped up one block and all the way around to the opposite side of the building.
It was not a Portland-sized crowd, but Florida isn't Oregon and it was midday during the middle of the workweek.
We somehow managed to get on the floor. I think it must have been the official-looking and quite flattering Gators for Obama t-shirts. In addition to possibly being on camera, this meant that at one point I was within maybe 20ft of Obama.
The mayor of Tampa, Pam Iorio, gave a rousing welcome to Sen. Obama and declared that Tampa was Obama country. Let's hope so. A little while later (after several rounds of "the wave," the "Yes We Can" video and some time-killing music) Reps. Rob Wexler (FL-19) and Kathy Castor (FL-11) took the stage. They were both fantastic and clearly popular with the Tampa natives -- Florida needs more politicians like these two at every level of government.
Rep. Castor introduced Obama and brought down the house.
Sen. Obama took the stage at about 12:40 and delivered a fairly typical stump speech, perhaps slightly more directed toward general election issues than in the past. I had not previously seen Sen. Obama in person, so I was excited even if the talking points were not new. He looked a little tired, but he still smiled and he still spoke forcefully about his hopes and dreams for America.
Also, several would-be suitors declared their love for Barack during his speech, which seemed to amuse him.
This is the Senator giving it to McCain (at whose very mention the crowd booed emphatically):
Sen. Barack Obama in professor mode:
Change we can believe in:
The crowd was amazing. The St. Pete Times forum seats about 20,000 depending on the event, and it was well over half capacity (maybe even 3/4) by the time Obama was on stage.
By the way, in case you were wondering, this is what hope looks like:
Florida will be an uphill battle for November, but it's a fight we must make and may very well win.
YES WE CAN!
Update:
For those of you who want more than pictures, there are now lots of stories about the rally:
ABC Action News estimates the crowd at a little over 15,000
The Tampa Tribune story says "He [Obama] has our attention" but wants more details
The short story from the NYT mentions the seating of FL and MI delegates, which Obama did not discuss at the rally
Update 2:
This was going to be the most awesome Barack Obama picture ever, but change we can believe in got in the way of my photo op. Darn.
Permalink | 29 comments