Kansans' spirits are Mile High

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Aug 29, 2008 by Jan Biles

By Jan Biles

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

DENVER -- Topeka resident Andrea Palmer was wearing her allegiance on her T-shirt Thursday morning as she checked in at the Kansas Democratic Party headquarters in the Double Tree Hotel in Denver.

Handwritten on the T-shirt was "Mama for Obama."

Palmer is one of nearly 200 Kansans who won two tickets to the Democratic National Convention rally Thursday at Invesco Field at Mile High in a drawing sponsored by the Kansas Democratic Party. Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, accepted his party's nomination at the rally.

"Instead of observing history, I wanted to be a participant in it," Palmer said earlier.

A mother of three young children, Palmer said it took "a lot of arranging" for her and her husband, Tom Beall, to be able to attend the rally. Although she has been politically active in the past, it is her first time to attend a national convention event.

"I just want to hear it all, absorb it and remember it forever," she said.

Jason Camis, an Ottawa resident who also won two tickets to the rally, said he entered the drawing because he thought the rally would be "monumental."

"I didn't think I had a chance of getting in," said Camis, who works at the YMCA of Greater Kansas City. "Barack is a dynamic speaker. I thought it'd be like going to an inauguration."

Camis and a friend left the Kansas City area after he got off work on Wednesday afternoon and drove overnight to get to Denver. They arrived around 3 a.m. Thursday. He said they plan to stay in the Mile High City for a couple of days before returning to Ottawa.

Camis, a former Democratic Party co-chairman for Franklin County, said he has voted Democratic in past elections but no candidate has been as exciting as Obama.

"I'm one of those people who like change," he said. "I think hearing it will make it more real."

The Republican National Convention kicks off Monday in Minneapolis-St. Paul and will run through Thursday. Obama and Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, are scheduled to face each other in their first debate on Sept. 26.

Convention notes

Former Kansas Congressman Dan Glickman spoke Thursday morning at the Kansas delegation breakfast in Denver. Glickman, who served 18 years in the U.S. House before being appointed U.S. secretary of agriculture, is now chief executive officer of the Motion Picture Association of America.

Glickman said he wrote a blog last week for the Huffington Report on the influence of motion pictures on politics. He said the best political movie ever is "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." The lead character, played by Jimmy Stewart, filibusters on the floor of Congress and tells his fellow lawmakers that lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.

"We're getting back to that," he said.

- Congressman Dennis Moore, of Lenexa, spoke briefly at the breakfast, too. He pointed out the differences between the first President George Bush and the current President George Bush.

He said the first Bush was a thoughtful and intelligent man. Under the current Bush administration, he said the United States has lost its standing in the world.

"We had more goodwill after Sept. 11," Moore said, referring to all the condolences received from other countries after the terrorist attacks. "Now it's all gone."

He said the current president has the attitude that, "We're the superpower of the world, and you do it our way or else."

- Topeka resident Marie Carter has carried a spiral notebook wherever she has gone this week and asked people to write a remembrance on its pages.

While she has notes from people from throughout the United States, the highlight came Wednesday when she met actress Angela Bassett at a black caucus and got her to write this paragraph in her notebook:

"This is one of the most extraordinary historic moments of my life. The other in South Africa for the end of apartheid."

Jan Biles can be reached

at (785) 295-1292

or jan.biles@cjonline.com.