Days 2 and 3 - Dec. 26 - 27, 2015
Once I had woken up at 10 AM (thanks, jet lag), I legged it over to Cruz’s volunteer headquarters with Swallow and some other students. Of course, there was not a lot of work because of the holidays. Still, most of the volunteers were gathered at the office planning while drinking eggnog and sucking on candy canes.
Then we went and found out about the education background (starting from kindergarten) about every single persona that worked there, and cleaned out their supply of leftover Christmas cookies.
Somewhat surprisingly, I found another Californian in the office. He was from the town a bit further south from where I live. His name was Mark, and he worked as an attorney in the SF Bay Area. We talked a bit, and of course, I learned about what he did in school. Also, he decided to go one better and start from pre-K, I liked him straight away. After we stuck our pins onto an American map (in the MSNBC video), day 2 ended in peace.
The following day came with our first presidential candidate! It was a Democrat! It wasn’t Hillary Clinton! It was Martin O’Malley! “Wait, who?” I hear you say. Martin O’Malley! Currently in third place in Democratic polling! … out of three.
We saw him at the Des Moines Social Club in downtown. It was a nice place, not too many people, free apple cider, and people were chatting with each other quietly when we arrived. The mayor of Des Moines introduced Governor O’Malley to start the speech. O’Malley’s rally (hey that rhymes) was very small, but friendly. It was honestly more like a gathering. I mean, he was governor of Maryland. This room is not huge (it obviously had seats and a podium for the speaker), but he was a PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. Who doesn’t want to see him, and get a picture with him, and an autograph, and cheer cards and stuff like that? After giving a speech on war, peace, and other political muck, O’Malley stayed for a few more minutes to take pictures with the audience and sign autographs. We also met his 18-year old son, Will. This meeting certainly didn’t prepare me for the hordes of people at other rallies.
I honestly think this was the only rally at which I actually got a decent seat, and could see the candidate without trying to see over a pack of people.