Inside The 2008 Political Conventions

Two Baltimore delegates on the conventions

Barbara Pash

Staff Reporter

Kathleen Miller: Democratic Convention
Kathleen Miller has heard Barack Obama in person four times. She has traveled, on her own dime, to various states to do so. In August, Miller, a manager of a holistic pharmacy, flew to Denver, Colo., to listen to the Illinois Senator again. This time, she was an official Obama delegate to the national Democratic presidential convention.

“He’s inspirational. He motivates you,” says Miller, who first heard Obama at a local event in 2002. Miller is married to Scott, a chef at The Chimes. They have two sons, Oliver, 13, and JJ, 7, live in Timonium and belong to Temple Emanuel.

Until then, Miller had not been involved in politics. That changed. “I wanted to attend [the 2008 presidential] convention although I had no idea you had to be a delegate” to do so, recalls Miller, who became a volunteer in the state Obama campaign.

Miller paid for her airfare, hotel and food. For a fee of $150, the Maryland delegation got breakfast and an evening event during the four-day convention. This turned out to be quite a bargain. In the mornings, there were delegation breakfasts
and invited speakers; the evenings, dinners and events.

One night, Senator John Kerry spoke; another night, Gov. Martin O’Malley hosted an “Irish evening.” “You got a lot of entertainment for the money,” says Miller.

There are perks to being from a state that is considered important to the election. Maryland, whose small number of electoral votes are guaranteed to go Democrat, is not one of them.

The 100-member Maryland delegation (not counting elected officials who accompanied it) stayed in the Denver Renaissance Hotel, which
required a shuttle bus to the convention sites. On the convention floor, it didn’t have the best spot, either.

Security was tight. “Once you were on the shuttle bus, you couldn’t leave,” says Miller. A four-block radius around the convention site was “locked down.” To get into the convention itself, delegates had to show their badges, have their bags searched and go through a metal detector. No liquids were allowed inside.

The convention started at 3:30 p.m. Miller was in her seat from the moment the gavel banged to the very end of each day. “I didn’t want to miss a thing,” she says.

Miller says she tried to keep her emotions in check. But there were times when she couldn’t. After Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy spoke, the Maryland delegation could see from its vantage point that he sat in a wheelchair as soon as he got off-stage.

“He looks good on TV. But he’s in bad shape,” says Miller.

The delegation was seated near Reuters, the international news agency. Soon, Miller was toting a video camera, buttonholing other delegates for short recordings for Reuters’ “Inside the Tent” feature. Reuters was particularly interested in having her talk to supporters of New York Senator Hillary Clinton who, up to the bitter end, hoped their candidate would get the V.P. nod.

“I wasn’t paid but I got to talk to people I wouldn’t ordinarily,” says Miller of her video-filming stint.

The Maryland delegation broke down as 94 for Obama, 6 for Hillary Clinton. There was apprehension before New York Senator Hillary Clinton’s speech. “Would she behave? How would her supporters react?” recalls Miller.

In the end, Clinton’s address went a long way towards mending wounds. The next night, her husband, ex-President Bill Clinton, cinched it.

“He united the party,” in Miller’s opinion.

Delaware Senator Joe Biden was Miller’s first pick for vice president; she was pleased when he was actually chosen for that slot. So were others.

“People were thrilled,” she says, although “I had no idea what his story was. But he’s really middle-class. He rides the train to and from Washington, D.C. He has a mortgage.”

Miller encountered other celebrities who, despite the media build-up, turned out to be real people too.

At one point, TV’s Katie Couric interviewed Michelle Obama not more than 15-feet from the Maryland delegation. Afterwards, both women turned to wave and chat with them.

Needless to say, the highlight of the convention for Miller was Obama’s speech, where he talked of actions and responsibilities, and spelled out his agenda.

“It was the tough side of Obama and it was phenomenal,” says Miller, who will be traveling to Pennsylvania and Virginia on his behalf before the November election. “But then, I didn’t expect anything less.”

Dr. Gary Applebaum: Republican Convention
Dr. Gary Applebaum attended the Republican presidential convention in three capacities. A long-time party activist who ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate in the 2006 3rd Congressional District race, he went as a guest of the Maryland GOP, as a traveling delegate for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and as a member of Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).

“I divided my time among those three,” says Applebaum, a practicing physician who is involved in health care policy. He lives in Owings Mills and belongs to Chizuk Amuno and Beth Tfiloh congregations. He is a member of the board at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School.

Applebaum paid for his flight and hotel but meals were free. “Everything you went to, there was either breakfast, lunch, dinner or heavy hors d’oeuvres,” says Applebaum, who figures he spent exactly $1 of his own on food. “I bought a bagel.”

There were 160 people in the Maryland delegation, split between 70 delegates and alternatives, and 90 guests. Hotel and seating on the convention floor is arranged according to the state’s importance. Even though Maryland is a “blue” state, it got a plum hotel assignment, the Embassy Suites in St. Paul, Minn., two blocks from the Xcel Center, the convention site.

The reason is simple. A prominent Maryland Republican was on the convention’s housing assignment committee. “We got very good treatment,” says Applebaum.

The state delegation’s seats on the convention floor weren’t nearly as good. They were relegated to the rear of the convention floor. Says Applebaum: “We were sitting in front of Wolf Blitzer and the CNN cameras, so the back of our heads were frequently on view on TV.”

Applebaum usually started the day with the Maryland delegation for a private breakfast, at which Republicans like ex-Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele spoke. Because the convention didn’t start until 6 p.m. central time, the delegation then went on various sight-seeing trips.

Applebaum, instead, attended AIPAC and RJC events, sometimes surreally so. One day, he went to two presentations by Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman — in the morning and in the evening.

“It was the same room but different banners” [behind the podium], says Applebaum. “I thought, ‘Wasn’t I just here this morning?’”

At the AIPAC and RJC meetings, Republican bigwigs spent most of their time reassuring attendees on the subject of Israel. More than half of
the Republican senators and several Congressmen spoke.

“Their role was to say that they are incredibly supportive, and McCain is the most supportive, of Israel. That’s the message they kept pounding out,” he says.

Applebaum called the security outside Xcel Center a “show of overwhelming force.” There were police of “every variety — on horses, on bikes, with dogs,” he recalls, “as well as SWAT teams with heavy helmets and big guns.” Protest groups stood outside a “perimeter” created by large, moveable fences.

He also was impressed by the size of the press corps. He heard a figure of 15,000 press people, and he could well believe it. Inside the perimeter was a line of 50 tables, by his count, of local and national radio shows doing live broadcasts. He chatted with a gentleman who turned out to be one of 15 reporters sent by The New York Times.

Applebaum attended several panels where presidential candidate McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin were analyzed. At one such talk before Palin’s speech, “the consensus of the pundits was that she was a high reward/high risk candidate,” he says, meaning she had the potential to energize the party (the reward) but she might not be able to withstand the media scrutiny (the risk).

Applebaum believes Palin’s speech accomplished the goal. So did McCain’s. “He’s not the compelling speaker Obama is. But the last 10 minutes of his speech, I got tears in my eyes,” says Applebaum. “His campaign people must have told him, ‘You’ve got 40 million people watching you. This is your opportunity to tell your story.’ And he did.”

Applebaum says he heard from several sources that McCain knew about Palin’s pregnant daughter before he chose her. “It wasn’t a revelation. McCain made the decision to pick a non-traditional candidate, an unknown,” he says, who could be portrayed as a “change agent,” one of the buzzwords of this presidential election.

In Applebaum’s opinion, it paid off. “After their speeches, you could tell, these are real people.”

October 3, 2008