County - The Metro Herald

YES WE CAN—2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
OBAMA SUPPORTERS
WEEP WITH JOY IN CHICAGO
Cheering, screaming and weeping with joy, an estimated 50,000 Barack
Obama supporters welcomed his election Tuesday night in a delirious
victory celebration in the senator’s hometown.
Many had crammed into Grant Park to be a part of something that would
be remembered for generations.
“I want her to be able to tell her children when history was made, she was
there,” said Alnita Tillman, 50, who kept her 16-year-old daughter, Raven, out
of school so they could be at the park by 8a.m., more than 10 hours before the
gates opened.
The crowd went wild with joy as the news that Obama would be the nation’s
first black president flashed across jumbo TV screens in the park where
Obama was to speak later that night. Many held both hands high up in the air,
waved American flags, jumped up and down and cheered.
As Obama left his Hyde Park home in a motorcade, heading for the restivities,
residents rushed out of their homes and lined the streets to wave, clap
and cheer.
The downtown Chicago park—where police fought anti-war protesters
during the turbulent 1968 Democratic convention—was transformed on an
unseasonably balmy night by white tents and a stage lined with American
flags and hung with red, white and blue bunting.
Lighted windows in the skyscrapers lining the park added to the festive atmosphere,
spelling out “USA” and “Vote 2008.”
The crowd erupted in cheers each time an Obama victory was announced
in another state.
The rally felt like a cross between an outdoor rock concert and a big family
outing. Many people wore Obama T-shirts and buttons and ate pizza. By
9p.m. several babies slept on their mothers’ chests. Other children snoozed in
strollers.
In the crowd was Lisa Boon, 42, of Chicago, who said she burst into tears
earlier in the day pondering what an Obama victory would mean.
Boon said her father was the cousin of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black
Chicagoan who was abducted and killed in Mississippi in 1955, purportedly
for whistling at a white woman.
“I was thinking of all the things done to Emmett and injustices to black
people,” she said. “This is amazing, simply amazing.”
Stephanie Smith, 27, and her husband flew in from Nashville, Tenn., and
staked out a spot on the sidewalk with folding chairs and a box of doughnuts
early in the morning.
Even without tickets, Smith said it would be worth it to be standing in the
park to hear the words, “Our next President of the United States is Barack
Obama.”
OBAMA
SPENDS 20
MILLION
DOLLARS
ON LATINO
OUTREACH
Democratic presidential
candidate Barack
Obama spent some 20
million dollars on a nationwide
campaign to pursue the support
of Hispanic voters, his campaign
announced. The money
was used to register and ‘mobilize’
eligible Latino voters
through television advertising,
internet outreach and visits by
members of Congress to key
constituencies around the country,
the Obama campaign said.
The growing US Hispanic
community had a significant
impact on the White House
race this year, especially in
several key battleground states
including Nevada, New Mexico,
Colorado and Florida.
An opinion poll last week
showed that Hispanic voters
prefer Obama over presumptive
Republican nominee John
McCain by a nearly 3-to-1
margin. Obama beats McCain
by 66 per cent to 23 per cent
among registered Hispanic
voters nationwide, the Pew
Hispanic Center said. About 9
million Latinos were eligible to
vote.
ELECTION POETRY
By Patricia Fenn, Special to Metro Herald
November 7, 2008
For the past several months, a
board of advisors has been informally
planning for a possible
presidential transition. Among the
many projects undertaken by the
transition board have been detailed
analyses of previous transition efforts,
policy statements made during the
campaign, and the workings of federal
government agencies, and priority positions
that must be filled by the incoming
administration.
With Barack Obama and Joe
Biden’s election, this planning process
will now be formally organized as the
Obama-Biden Transition Project, a
501(c)(4) organization to ensure a
smooth transition from one administration
to the next. The work of this entity
will be overseen by three cochairs:
John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett,
and Pete Rouse.
The co-chairs will be assisted by an
advisory board comprised of individuals
with significant private and public
Some years back in the youthful excitement of former Governor
Howard Dean’s Democratic primary campaign for president, thousands
of volunteers from across the county, including Maryland,
went to New Hampshire to brave frigid temperatures and curry votes.
Activist and actor Martin Sheen joined us and the candidate at a getout-the-vote
rally at Josiah Bartlett Elementary School in Bartlett, N.H.
Martin Sheen’s character on NBC’s-Emmy awarding TV series of seven
years, “The West Wing”, carried the name of President Josiah Edward
‘Jed’ Bartlet.
In real life, Josiah Bartlett, (November 21, 1729–May 19, 1795) had
an illustrious career: physician, statesman, representive from N.H., to
the Continental Congress, signatory of the Declaration of Independence,
Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Court of Judicare and later governor
of the state, according to biographical information.
Sheen said in his preliminary remarks that the school had been trying
to get him to pay a visit for many years with wonderful letters from students,
bake sale items from their parents and entreaties from public officials,
but to no avail until that February, in 2004.
After Sheen spoke about Dean and took questions and answers, he
brought the house down with the following patriotic recitation from Rabindranath
Tagore’s Geetanjali, the Nobel Laureate in literature in 1913
from India.
In the aftermath of this close election, it seemed like the right time to
hear this verse again:
WHERE THE MIND IS WITHOUT FEAR
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA AND
VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT JOE BIDEN
ANNOUNCE THEIR TRANSITION LEADERSHIP
UNITED
WE
STAND
sector experience: Carol Browner,
William Daley, Christopher Edley,
Michael Froman, Julius Genachowski,
Donald Gips, Governor Janet Napolitano,
Federico Peña, Susan Rice, Sonal
Shah, Mark Gitenstein, and Ted Kaufman.
Gitenstein and Kaufman will
serve as co-chairs of Vice Presidentelect
Biden’s transition team.
Supervising the day-to-day activities
of the transition will be:
• Chris Lu—Executive Director
• Dan Pfeiffer—Communications
Director
• Stephanie Cutter—Chief
Spokesperson
• Cassandra Butts—General Counsel
• Jim Messina—Personnel Director
• Patrick Gaspard—Associate Personnel
Director
• Christine Varney—Personnel
Counsel
• Melody Barnes—Co-Director of
Agency Review
• Lisa Brown—Co-Director of
Agency Review
• Phil Schiliro—Director of Congressional
Relations
• Michael Strautmanis—Director of
Public Liaison and Intergovernmental
Affairs
• Katy Kale—Director of Operations
• Brad Kiley—Director of Operations
PRESIDENTIAL RESULTS BY STATE
VIRGINIA
Barack Obama (D) 1,724,510 51%
John McCain (R) 1,603,695 48%
DRISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Barack Obama (D) 210,403 93%
John McCain (R) 14,821 7%
MARYLAND
Barack Obama (D) 1,244,932 60%
John McCain (R) 795,032 38%
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVE RESULTS
VIRGINIA WINNERS
District 1 Rob Wittman (R) 189,873 57%
District 8 Jum Moran (D) 131,631 67%
District 10 Frank Wolf (R) 166,978 61%
District 11 Gerald Connolly (D) 90,114 53%
MARYLAND WINNERS
District 1 Too close to call
District 4 Donna Edwards (D) 140,148 83%
District 5 Steny Hoyer (D) 156,241 70%
District 6 Roscoe Bartlett (R) 169,214 58%
District 8 Chris Van Hollen (D) 162,215 75%
DISTRICT WINNERS
Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) 196,618 93%
U.S. SENATE RESULTS
VIRGINIA
Mark Warner 2,115,021 64%
Jim Gilmore ® 1,147,592 35%
Gail Parker 21,619 1%
William Redpath (L) 18,475 1%
DC RESULTS
AT-LARGE MEMBER OF COUNCIL
Kwame R. Brown (D) 148,617 48%
Michael A. Brown (I) 62,023 20%
COUNCIL MEMBER
WARD 2
Jack Evans (D) 18,126 82%
Christina Culver (R) 3,946 18%
WARD 4
Muriel Bowser (D) 26,597 100%
WARD 7
Yvette Alexander (D) 26,136 92%
Jimmy Johnson (I) 2,153 8%
WARD 8
Marion Barry (D) 21,876 92%
Darrell Gaston (I) 1,006 4%
Yavocka Young (I) 885 4%
12 THE METRO HERALD