17 days and counting…
Posted: Sunday, August 24, 2008 1:20 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
Reporting from the road with the Obama campaign…
PRESS INTERACTION: Obama has not held a press conference this week. In fact, it has been 17 days since the candidate has done so -- on Thursday, Aug. 7 on the plane from Minneapolis to Chicago before Obama departed for Hawaii.
The press corps was told there would likely be one this morning, but later we were told that we should get one tomorrow and that the issue is working out the timing and whether it will be on the ground or on the plane.
The only interaction Obama has had with the traveling press is shouted questions from the pool during his comings and goings, which he alternately answers and ignores.
Access seems to be declining more and more. Because NBC's press pool days have not included any local stops, the first time this week I have been closer than 15 feet from the candidate was when deplaning here in Wisconsin earlier today.
It's noteworthy that the first group interview with the Obamas and the Bidens was with People Magazine. It was ostensibly a photo shoot, but the magazine's correspondent asked questions here and there throughout. Only the wives were quoted in the story, but there is surely more to come.
CROWDS/VOTERS: Generally speaking, the events this week seemed to be populated by mostly by supporters. The crowds in Raleigh, NC, and Lynchburg and Chesapeake, VA, were especially enthusiastic. At a smaller at a community college in Martinsville, VA - about 350 people - I spoke with several white women ranging in age from their 30s to their 50s just before the event.
All of them were students at the community college and they were most interested in hearing the candidates' plans for jobs as several had seen their jobs shipped overseas. They said they were undecided and had not been paying much attention to the race and therefore did not yet feel informed enough to make a choice.
I spoke with two of the women in depth. Jennifer Blunt lost her job in furniture manufacturing -- it was shipped to China. She and another woman have gotten federal help to attend Patrick Henry Community College, where the event was held, for two years for more job training. Blunt said they were between sessions and that she had come because she was open to Obama "and also to be a part of history."
Something notable in Chesapeake, VA, in the southeastern corner of the state near the coast and about 20 miles from the North Carolina state line, was that the crowd was more than 90 percent black. I've seen crowds like this in Georgia too. (It's worth noting that Obama was introduced at this event by a white man in his 70s.)
Certainly Obama must attract voters other than the black ones that support him overwhelmingly, so it will be interesting to watch whether the campaign can grow the numbers of folks outside his demographic in these southern states with sizeable black populations. Is it possible that some whites feel uncomfortable being in the minority at events like this?
ORGANIZING: At several events ahead of the VP selection, volunteers asked people to sign up for the "first-to-know" text. In Martinsville, the campaign's regional field director also invited attendees to come down to local Obama campaign office to meet congressional candidate Tom Perriello later in the day where he'd be launching a canvas kick-off. Note: In another sign of how controlled or -- disciplined -- some staff are, when I spoke to the regional director she immediately began by saying she could not talk to me on the record and I had to carefully walk her back so that I could get some basic information.
