If you watch or read any amount of news that’s more than “none”, you see the reports from political rallies all the time. It’s commonplace, especially in an election year … “Oh yeah, <CANDIDATE> spoke in <CITY> at <LOCATION> to talk about <CANDIDACY>.” It ratchets up to another level if you actually get to attend one. And if you’re like me, working media in a market where one of those is held and get to attend, and be “inside the ropes”, you can take that up another level.
Just, please, hold the bullets. Thanks, appreciate it.
Presidential candidates have made their way through Osceola County in recent elections, like Barack Obama at Osceola Heritage Park in 2008 and Kissimmee Civic Center in 2012, Bernie Sanders in 2014 and both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016. I attended both of the ’16 events, four days apart, at OHP. I even came up with a hashtag for the week: #Hillerump. Yeah, some people hated it.
Those two were my first big campaign events as a news reporter; I had switched from sports just a couple years prior, and these campaign events seemed like a big rolling carnival to me—complete with the clowns. (Sorry, that was too easy.)
The security to get in was about as I expected—think TSA at the airport, then kick it up just a bit. I traveled light, just the laptop, mouse, notebook and business cards (After all, great time to network, right?) in the bag, which was thoroughly searched, went through the metal detectors, then given implicit directions to the media center where political reporters clacked away very seriously. I sat down and just started typing my thoughts at the moment to fit in.
The events were about what I expected—a couple hours of fervent messaging in front of thousands of people who think just like them, whipped into a frenzy to carry their messaging back home and to work with all that gusto. Made for pretty good writing, and least, and not a terrible way to spend a work day. Met some really interesting people, and saw a side I hadn’t seen before in others I already knew.
Thanks to the layers of federal security present, much of which I’m sure I never saw, I never felt unsafe at either event. And that was even as Trump instructed the crowd to boo at the media area, placed right in the middle of the Silver Spurs Arena floor, about past fake news. I wasn’t the slightest bit concerned. I think I actually laughed a little. I was already in a snarky mood about those gatherings, since I wore a red shirt to Hillary’s and a blue one to Donald’s.
Granted, these were indoor events, unlike the outdoor one Saturday in Pennsylvania. And as the details of Saturday continue to come out, I’m glad that my experience was eight years ago. Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a bulletin that violent extremists could try to conduct “follow-on or retaliatory” attacks at events over the next few months of the presidential campaign.
Oh, for the love of all that’s decent. What happened to “taking the temperature down” like President Biden mentioned Sunday night?
