I arrived in Mt. Pleasant about 40 minutes ago and the crowd at the Iowa Wesleyan College gym has slowly but surely continued to increase in size and the local student band is here to play as well.
In terms of media, I was completely surprised at the number of national outlets that have turned out to cover the announcement. Candy Crowley of CNN is here, as well as Carl Cameron from Fox News, and a team from Chicago came to cover the event for NBC. Locally, all of the outlets seem to be here as well as folks from the Quad Cities and the Iowa City-Cedar Rapids area. There’s even a Twin Cities crew as well as a photojournalist from Great Britain. So literally, folks are coming from all over to see Vilsack’s announcement.
In terms of Democratic dignitaries and faces, I haven’t seen too many yet. I know Gordon Fischer and his wife are here, and Gordon is actually doing a TV interview right now. He’s got a Vilsack 08 sticker on so it looks like he’s already doing the interviews. It looks like there a couple of staffers from the Gov.’s office here too as well, so it looks like there will be some loyalty for sure.
I’ve seen the prepared remarks from Vilsack and they look to be quite motivating, but it will definitely be interesting to see how the crowd reacts. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera but I hear that TomVilsack08.com will have some photos taken by spectators at the potluck and today’s announcement up on their site soon.
More to come…
Oh, and WOI-TV lives up to expectations by arriving late and almost not having room on the press stage for their camera. And now their crew is bickering about how they’re going to cover the event.
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