Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
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 Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:47 am Post subject: BZ! Mike Solhaug & Arv Chauncey |
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Mike and Arv say "Pitch THIS!"
| Quote: | Edwards makes one final pitch to deliver the vote Bob Von Sternberg and Sharon Schmickle
Minneapolis Star Tribune
November 2, 2004
Standing onstage at the Hamline University fieldhouse first thing Monday morning, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards beamed as more than 2,000 supporters roared out to him:
"One more day! One more day! One more day!"
On the last full day of an intensely fought presidential campaign in Minnesota, Edwards' visit was one of a handful of events staged to try to deliver the state's 10 electoral votes to either John Kerry or George Bush.
The Republican counterparts to Edwards in Minnesota included two representatives of Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth and Bush's chief of staff Andrew Card.
Edwards delivered a compressed 17-minute version of his stump speech on the first stop of a five-state swing that was to end Monday night "when he flops into bed just rested enough to be the next vice president of the United States," said former Vice President Walter Mondale.
"I love coming to Minnesota -- this is a place where people understand what being a Democrat means," Edwards said. "This is a place where you understand what's at stake this election."
Speaking at the same spot where he made his debut Minnesota appearance in February, Edwards told his supporters, "one thing we know, the American Dream is on the ballot."
He continued: "I have lived in the bright light of America, but that light is flickering. George Bush doesn't see that light. Dick Cheney doesn't. But you see it."
He led the crowd, revival-style, in a call-and-response litany, asking them several things, among them, "Will George Bush fight as hard for your job as he does for his?"
"NO!" the crowd responded.
Edwards had some star power with him in the form of talk show veteran Phil Donahue; Donahue's wife, actress Marlo Thomas, and actor Josh Hartnett, a St. Paul native who later appeared in Rochester and Mankato.
Rochester also got a visit from Card, working to turn out votes on Bush's behalf. He went on to Duluth and Moorhead, as well.
At the Edwards rally, Hartnett was incredulous about the fact that a once-reliably Democratic state has become a battleground. "Since when did we become a swing state anyway?" he said. "What's this all about? Let's get out there and show them."
Radio humorist and author Garrison Keillor emceed the event, as he did in Rochester for Kerry last week. "People across this country are coming to realize we cannot bear four more years of this," he said. "It isn't that anybody hates him. It's just that we want him to stop doing what he's doing."
Keillor opened the rally by saying, "This is the morning before the day of the beginning of the end of the Bush administration!"
Working the mall
Later, on the Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, it took a minute for Gail Smith, 40, to recognize the grey-haired guy with the Kerry/Edwards pitch -- even after he said, "Hi, I'm Phil Donahue."
She screamed and threw her arms around him. "I'm here to ask you to vote tomorrow and vote for John Kerry," Donahue said. "I'll vote for you," Smith gushed. "I love you."
Up and down the mall, the lunch crowd allowed Donahue and Thomas to plaster lapels with Kerry/Edwards stickers.
"Don't throw away your vote," Thomas pleaded with Sean Hardin who said he plans to vote for Ralph Nader.
Acknowledging that her husband had campaigned for Nader in 2000, Thomas said, "We need a third party, but that issue isn't going to be decided tomorrow. ... We are voting for who leads the country and who influences the entire planet."
Security guards politely ordered the campaign entourage out of the IDS Center's Crystal Court. On the street, though, even bus drivers stopped to be photographed with Donahue and Thomas, who also appeared in Edina, Plymouth, St. Paul and elsewhere in Minneapolis.
For a different perspective, Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth invited reporters to the Minneapolis Marriott City Center, where two U.S. Navy veterans of the Vietnam War aired their vehement opposition to Kerry.
Mike Solhaug, 59, a pediatrician who grew up in Minneapolis and lives in Virginia Beach, Va., said he went through swift boat training with Kerry but didn't serve directly with him in Vietnam. Solhaug said Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony against the war "made accusations specifically addressed against the fighting men of the United States."
Solhaug said he returned to Minnesota on Monday to lend emphasis to ads the Swift Boat group ran against Kerry in the final days of the election.
"If I, as a Minnesotan, could talk to citizens of this state, it might lend some veracity and credibility to our Swift Boat Veterans and POW message," he said.
Arv Chauncey, 68, a former Navy officer who now lives in Eden Prairie, said U.S. protesters "demoralized" him during the five years and nine months he was held prisoner in Vietnam.
"John Kerry's words were aiding and abetting the North Vietnamese cause," Chauncey said.
Outside the private meeting room, more than a dozen veterans backing Kerry staged a counter appeal to reporters.
Among them was Lou Ellingson, of Eden Prairie, who served in the same Navy squadron with Kerry. He rejected the Swift Boat group's claim that their efforts are independent of the Bush campaign: "It's a bunch of lies and these are a bunch of grumpy old men. ... It's a Republican operation to detract from the Iraq war."
Minneapolis Star-Tribune |
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