Kerry and Edwards, two Johns come to St. Petersburg

It all happened Wednesday night and it was the most fun, chaos and excitement I have seen on the campaign trails yet. in my humble opinion, this campaign has begun to run on full steam.

Wednesday night, after finishing the opinion section at the paper, I left the newsroom and sped over to St. Petersburg where John Kerry was expected to speak, this time with the newly announced VP candidate John Edwards in tow.

Before taking the exit I thought I needed to take I called a friend at the newsroom and asked for directions, but once I came off the interstate in St. Pete it was hard to miss. According to the St. Petersburg Times “the St. Petersburg Police Department generously estimated the crowd at nearly 10,000. Only about 2,000 got into the historic Coliseum for the event, which started about 10 p.m. and lasted about 45 minutes. After the rally, Kerry and Edwards went outside to greet supporters.”
link to story with much more background

So I parked a few blocks away and walked back to the Coliseum.

It was pandaemonium. Several thousand people stood on one side of the street outside the building listening to the speech on loudspeakers. On the other side a large crowd of about a hundred were heckling the Kerry supporters brandishing Bush ‘04 signs and shouting rather rude insults at the opposing crowd.

It rather resembled crowds opposing different European soccer teams than followers of a political candidate. I would have stayed outside to take some photos but Kerry was taking the stage inside as I arrived so I rounded the building asking trying to get inside.

6 secret service men and one sheriff’s deputy gradually sent me from one entrance to the next until I finally was allowed inside brandishing my press badge.

Inside the cheering capacity crowd had raised the temperature in the large ballroom to temperatures that did not rival the humid air outside in any way. Weaving through the crowd I finally made it to the press bleacher as Kerry was starting to speak. The crowd went nuts.

One thing I noticed while Kerry was going through his usual talking points was how tired his wife Teresa Heinz appeared. Maureen Dowd, columnist for the New York Times hit it on the head in Thursday’s NY Times, so I’ll just point you to her column here (free registration required).

But what was the weirdest event of the night came when I was back in the car editing the photos on my PowerBook to send one via my vell phone back to the newsroom. I heard police sirens and cars driving by me but was so busy I did not immediately look up. When I did I looked straight into a black SUV only to see Kerry look straight back at me. The fact that the car was driving by me at a rather brisk pace, which only gave me a short glimpse into the other car, only made the moment more surreal.

I did send the phot though and it appeared on The Oracle’s front page the next day. PDF here: link(3.5 mb)