Democratic party HQ, Euphoria
Downtown Radisson. . .
I made the rounds of the victory celebrations to gauge the reaction to a historic election.
First-time voter Rosalind Keys, left.
The first thing you notice squeezing your way through the crowded hotel staircases and halls is that these are not only happy Democrats, but they are young.
And they are here for Barack Obama. It doesn't matter to them that Utah is going overwhelmingly to McCain, that Jon Huntsman, Jason Chaffetz, Rob Bishop and Attorney General Mark Shurtleff have trounced their Democratic opponents. This is a celebration, and the energy is pulsating.
Misty Fowler, 31, chair of Utah's Obama machine, is wandering around in a daze. Almost two years ago, she read Obama's autobiography and dived into organizing the nation's reddest state. The turning point came when she and a few dozen Obama supporters got Obama to make a "brief" stop in Kimball Junction the summer of '07.
The few dozen turned into several hundred on the hillside below the Olympic ski jump and Obama's stop stretched into more than an hour — most of it just to shake hands. Fowler is still more amazed than anyone with what followed:
I made the rounds of the victory celebrations to gauge the reaction to a historic election.
First-time voter Rosalind Keys, left.The first thing you notice squeezing your way through the crowded hotel staircases and halls is that these are not only happy Democrats, but they are young.
And they are here for Barack Obama. It doesn't matter to them that Utah is going overwhelmingly to McCain, that Jon Huntsman, Jason Chaffetz, Rob Bishop and Attorney General Mark Shurtleff have trounced their Democratic opponents. This is a celebration, and the energy is pulsating.
Misty Fowler, 31, chair of Utah's Obama machine, is wandering around in a daze. Almost two years ago, she read Obama's autobiography and dived into organizing the nation's reddest state. The turning point came when she and a few dozen Obama supporters got Obama to make a "brief" stop in Kimball Junction the summer of '07.
The few dozen turned into several hundred on the hillside below the Olympic ski jump and Obama's stop stretched into more than an hour — most of it just to shake hands. Fowler is still more amazed than anyone with what followed:
When I got into this 22 months ago, I was in it for the right person — not the person I though was going to win. Now, it looks.... it looks like we are going to win.A few minutes later, I hear cheering and Rosalind Keys placidly tells me, "Obama has won." She is a 50-year-old African-American from Ogden. This is the first time in her life she has voted:
I voted for Obama. Before, it was just so much feuding.
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