Sitting on an old and near-dilapidated plane Tuesday night, I found myself unable to sleep, my mind consumed with curiosity about what lay before me.
I was on my way to Minnesota to cover the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Fresh from the Democratic National Convention in Denver, I wondered how my experience in St. Paul would differ from my adventures in the mile-high city.
I had driven to Denver to cover the DNC with two fellow Daily Titan editors. For this next assignment, I was literally flying solo.
I had a hotel booked and the phone number of a political reporter for the Orange County Register, where I had recently started an internship. Everything else, from coverage to transportation, I would have to figure out as I went.
A tale of two cities
Covering two conventions back-to-back offered a rare opportunity for comparison and perspective.
The first and most striking difference between the conventions was a shallow matter of the senses – the weather. When I left Denver it felt like the end of summer, warm and almost muggy days that made covering long protests a losing battle against perspiration. St. Paul, at least to a reporter coming from Southern California, was already in the the midst of fall.
The second thing that incredibly different was the attitude in interactions between police and protesters. Perhaps because several protests in St. Paul had already ended in violence before my arrival, the attitude between protesters and law enforcement was far tenser than it was at the DNC. Even grandmothers seemed to be going toe-to-toe with the officers.
The first protest that I ran across on Wednesday, was by a group called Code Pink. I had remembered them having a very visible presence in Denver as well. Mostly women, the Code Pinkers dress in – you guessed it – bright pink and go around handing out pink stickers advocating peace.
Standing in a downtown St. Paul square, the Code Pink group was singing a protest song while standing literally pressed up against police in full riot gear.
Janice Ward, a 57-year-old grandmother from Code Pink, was yelling at the police while first one, and then two, officers videotaped her.
"Do you want my name?" she asked a female officer who was holding a video camera.
"No," the officer replied. "I have your picture."
Ward said she objected to the the RNC being hosted in her state. She said that the previous day she had seen police "jump" a child and a member of the press.
"Aren't you ashamed?" she asked the officers.
Other protesters said they have had very positive interactions with the police, but it was easy to observe that the mood was far more somber then at the previous convention.
Except for key speeches, the crowd at the RNC seemed calmer than it had at the DNC. The convention floor seemed more organized and easier to navigate. The crowd seemed smaller, the rush around the hall, slower. If the DNC had the feel of a chaotic rock concert, in the earlier part of the night, the RNC seemed more like a well-organized business convention.
Of course, after Palin and McCain took the stage, the decibel level of the crowd turned up to maximum volume and the atmosphere completely changed, transforming into an exuberant chaos.
Because of recent violence by self-deemed "anarchist groups" many delegates said they were nervous, but the area outside of the Excel Energy Center seemed surprisingly quiet after the convention let out. Local businesses seemed deserted – banners and flags welcoming convention-goers flying over empty restaurant courtyards.
A missing demographic
It is fairly well covered by the media that young voters tend to gravitate towards Obama. According to the Orange County Register, 15 percent of delegates to the DNC were so-called youth delegates, but under two percent of the delegates at the RNC fell under that category.
Because of this, my mission at the RNC seemed clear – find young voters and discover what draws them to the Republican Party. What attracts teens and twentysomethings to McCain? What are the issues that matter to my generation and how does McCain address those issues?
Many of the young Republicans that I talked to said they related to McCain because of his stance on the issues that mattered to them. Another common answer was was that their parents were Republicans.
Kimberly Dena, a 19-year-old alternate delegate from Texas, said that she is a McCain supporter because she has friends in the Army and she wants a strong commander-in-chief in the White House.
"I am looking for substance and reform," the political science major at Texas Christian University, said. "Obama is a very entertaining speaker, but when it comes down to it I am looking at the resume and the policies," Dena said.
A graduate student at Marshall College, Nora Ankrom, said that McCain's avowedly strong stance on national security makes her feel safe.
Like many of the young delegates who I spoke with, both Dena and Ankrom felt energized by the addition of Gov. Sarah Palin to the presidential ticket. The 22-year-old Ankrom, who described herself as a social conservative, said she was originally a supporter of Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Having a strong woman like Palin on the ticket helped make Ankrom a McCain supporter.
When it came down to why young people support Obama in greater numbers, Ankrom said she thought college students naturally tend to be liberal.
"It's taught in college. It's an intellectual thing to discard the past for quote-unquote 'better ways,'" Ankrom said.
But Dena disagreed with the perception that young people are mostly rallying for Obama.
"Obama has mobilized the youth vote, but I think there has been equal young Republican response to fight for our beliefs just as vocally," Dena said.
In August, a Reuters/Zogby poll showed that the gap between McCain and Obama in young voter support had shrunk slightly, with 52 percent of young voters supporting Obama and 29 percent of voters in the same demographic favoring McCain.
Confusion abounds
While the convention attracted politically active students on both sides of the spectrum, the event also had a fair share of enthusiastic but perhaps less politically-aware young people.
Recent Orange High School graduates Grace Malaihollo and Evelyn Hurtado traveled to the convention through a program started by their former high school teacher.
Both Malaihollo and Hurtado come from Republican families. Hurtado said that she was a McCain supporter, but based her decision on a somewhat astounding mistake. The 18-year-old said that she was supporting McCain because she did not like the way Obama couldn't get along with his running mate Sen. Hillary Clinton. When Malaihollo and I explained that Clinton was not Obama's vice presidential nominee, the enthusiastic Hurtado seemed genuinely confused.
Malaihollo, on the other hand, was more aware of the issues even if it took some thinking to relate them to her life.
If Obama raises taxes it will make it harder to go to the mall,” she said, adding with a giggle, “which is really important.”
On the liberal side, I found some equal evidence of enthusiasm that lacked a bit of grounding.
Protesting in a downtown square with the group Code Pink, Chelsea Larson said the war was the most important issue in the election. But the 19-year-old undecided voter admitted that she was not registered to vote.
Covering the fray
“You know you are in no-man's land, right?" I looked at the friendly old man in bright yellow jacket that said "peace team" and nodded yes. He offered me a purple handkerchief to help shield my face from pepper spray and I shook my head, pulling out a white washcloth that I had borrowed from my hotel that morning.
I was covering a protest march that had been blocked by police on a highway overpass. We had been warned that the police would possibly move soon, and that cops were not differentiating between reporters and protesters.
I moved to the side of the bridge and wrapped my fingers around an iron fence, using it to pull myself up onto a concrete wall on the highway overpass. I wished, pointlessly, that I had not brought my laptop case. The black briefcase held not only my laptop, but both a still and video camera. Clinging precariously on the less than two-foot-wide ledge, aware that the police could move in to disperse the crowd, it seemed foolish and cumbersome to have the heavy bag strapped across my shoulders.
The crowd smelled of sweat and the tension on the bridge was so real that it seemed visceral.
I jumped down from the ledge, thinking that there must be a safer spot to stand. I wondered for a moment how far I was willing to go as a reporter. Was I willing to go to jail? Get maced? I had gotten the clubbing part out of the way earlier when I inadvertently found myself in the path of a police officer who used his club as a way of clearing a path through the crowd.
While I was lost in thoughts, the crowd moved off the bridge, off to another street and another stand-off. I followed the protest for four hours, having been warned several times by police that they did not care why you were there – staying could end in arrest. I left an hour before the police arrested nearly 400 protesters. Which I suppose means that some other day I will have to really answer how far I will go for a story.
Traveling together
Anthropology major Julia Shindel from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. was arrested while protesting at the Democratic National Convention in Denver and then drove through the night to St. Paul to protest the RNC.
The 19-year-old activist, who was crashing with friends in Minneapolis, said that the most memorable part of the conventions was the feeling of unity and camaraderie amongst the protesters.
If you are tear gassed, people will drop down to their knees and give you water, she said. If you are hungry, fellow protesters will give you food.
There was a feeling of solidarity amongst her fellow protesters that Shindel said can't be found in "corporate America."
"It's how life should be," Shindel said.
There were many young protesters in St. Paul who had driven or flown from distant places.
Political science major Mathew Magee from the University of Houston drove to the RNC with fellow Congressman Ron Paul supporter Tamara Shippy.
It was a whirlwind trip for the friends, who attended a Paul rally before heading back to Houston.
Shippy and Magee said they know that the candidate has no chance of winning the presidential election, but they want to spread the idea that it is important not to vote just for the lesser of two evils, and that the only wasted vote is the one that you don't cast.
The end of the ride
On the last night, after I filed my blogs for the Orange County Register, I walked out to the main convention floor. The building had all but emptied, workers moving swiftly to clean up, the sound of cheering replaced with the popping of thousands of balloons.
My exhaustion for a moment was replaced with a feeling of emptiness and calm. Convention season had finished. There would be two months of manic campaigning now, but for me, the ride was coming to an end. It was time for me to get back to school, to throw myself into my senior year of college.
I was sure that I would help cover election night for the school newspaper, but my two-week stint as a full-time political reporter was over.
