While walking through the local farmer’s market and purchasing some lovely produce from the Cooley Family Farm, among other vendors, we were approached by Obama supporter wanting to know if everyone in our party was registered to vote. After telling her that we have been registered voters for a number of years, she asked if we knew about the Obama regional office opening at 514 Main St. We had heard about it, we told her. She then asked if we knew about the opening reception taking place at 1PM today, with former US Senator Birch Bayh as a guest speaker. That we hadn’t heard about, so we took a flyer and told her we would be there. We finished our shopping and went home.

When it was time to go, I headed towards downtown Lafayette. I parked the car in the 5th street garage and walked over to the address, 514 Main St. The office was setup in a decent size space, easily accommodating those that were in attendance. By the time the speakers started, the place was packed with local officials, young Obama supporters outfitted in the various Obama clothing lines, and several people draped in the campaign garb for local people running.

As usual, I recorded the whole thing. Below you will find MP3s of the entire speech, and each speaker’s speech as its own separate file. Further down, we included a short list of things we learned from attending this event. Enjoy listening to your local politicians.

Listen to the full event
[audio:http://themediacollective.org/wp-content/uploads/newschannelinternet/obama-07-19-2008/obamaofficeopening-07-19-2008.mp3]
Download the full event (38:34)

The speaking order for this event was:

1. Christine Schellack (audio download) (1:57) [audio:http://themediacollective.org/wp-content/uploads/newschannelinternet/obama-07-19-2008/christineschellack-07-19-2008.mp3]
2. Joe Hogsett (audio download) (3:20) [audio:http://themediacollective.org/wp-content/uploads/newschannelinternet/obama-07-19-2008/joehogsett-07-19-2008.mp3]
3. John Polles (audio download) (2:25) [audio:http://themediacollective.org/wp-content/uploads/newschannelinternet/obama-07-19-2008/johnpolles-07-19-2008.mp3]
4. Nels Ackerson (audio download) (7:29) [audio:http://themediacollective.org/wp-content/uploads/newschannelinternet/obama-07-19-2008/nelsackerson-07-19-2008.mp3]
5. Birch Bayh (audio download) (23:27) [audio:http://themediacollective.org/wp-content/uploads/newschannelinternet/obama-07-19-2008/birchbayh-07-19-2008.mp3]

Things we learned from this event:

• Sheila Klinker wears very large platform shoes.
• Four years ago in the Democratic Party primary barely 300,000 people votes. In this past Democratic Party primary, 1.3 million people voted.
• You should know the full names of the people you are introducing at a function, such as this. Joe Hogsett will be posting an article on his blog dealing with this topic.
• Clapping will pickup very loudly on our audio setup.
• Elected politicians wear suits. Campaigning politicians wear polos.
• Politicians can be very loud and very quiet, depending on microphone placement.
• Young people are exciting in a campaign.
• Obama supporters have energy, representing an Americana from 200 hundred years ago.
• Senator Burch Buy is change embodied—he is the champion for change in the State of Indiana.
• Nels Ackerson and Birch Bayh graduated from Purdue’s School of Agriculture.
• Obama’s daughters are going to have an opportunity to participate fully in every aspect of American life with that glass ceiling fully removed, because of the leadership he is going to give to this great country that we love.
• Birch Bayh was a fighter, from the beginning, for civil rights. Voting hard votes that cost him cotes.
• We are going to bring to an end, judging people based on the complexion of their skin.
• We can reclaim the greatness of America, both home and abroad. We can do that in this State, Indiana, because this State will be blue.
• For the Democrats to win in West Lafayette—that is change.
• If we can put somebody on the moon, we should be able to find a solution to breast cancer and some of these other types of cancers.
• The word change has been mentioned a few times.
• The Democratic process usually works.
• Birch Bayh was involved in the actively involved in the civil rights movement and in Title 9.
• Joe Hogsett was the first campaign manager for Evan Bayh when he was running for Secretary of State.
• Moving towards the common good is great.
• Birch Bayh grew up with a grandmother and grandfather who said, “If you can’t say something good about somebody, don’t say anything.”
• Birch Bayh would like the record to show that he did not say anything bad about the President.
• Children laugh at times of war.
• All of Congress laughs at President Bush.
• It’s much better to have local change than federal change. You can see the people’s faces.
• It is important to put together teams.
• The time has come for some who may know neighbors who are Democrats, but don’t like the complexion of our nominee. Time to have a sit down with that individual and some other folks and say, “Hey. What’s really important? What he looks like or what he is going to do?”
• People in Indiana have feelings they are not proud of.
• Birch Bayh has bathed himself in an old sawmill pond.
• Hoosiers are Christians and love it when politicians hark back to the New Frontier era and quote John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK).