A 2008 Election Campaign Reminiscence: Battling for Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in Small Town Pennsylvania (6)

by R. Lee Cook

As might be expected, the interest and involvement of the students and faculty at the university in Clarion was very high, lifted there where it stayed buoyed, by the April 2008 General Primary Election visit of former President Bill Clinton in behalf of wife- then candidate Hillary Clinton. It was the first time a President had ever visited the town of Clarion. And of course, aside from their work in support of the local Democratic Party machine directed by Miller and his cohorts, a principal mission of the Obama ground troops was to organize the large student population.

Registering the Clarion student body Bill said was clearly a key focus “of the young men and women who came here in the Obama group. If they didn’t want to register here and they [the students] were registered at home, to give them an absentee ballot so that they would vote. That was the plan and that is pretty much what we did.”

“In Pennsylvania, you are registered in the precinct where you live. A college student can change his registration to the college since he is living here nine months out of the year, so this is his predominant residence .He or she can still vote at home. He can drive home to vote, but how many kids are going to do that? I’m guessing we registered 500 to 800 new voters on campus and a few other places. At the college among the students we had a 50 member Young Democratic Club and they were very effective also. They were a lot of our outreach people also. They worked very hard on campus and had tables to register voters. It was very exciting around the campus.”  

Aside from the obvious great joy and elation at the 2008 general election’s ultimate outcome with the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the nation’s 44th President, I asked Miller to assess the results and their meaning in the borough of Clarion and the surrounding towns of the county as a whole. I wanted to know how he and his wife truly felt things had turned out here in electoral terms in the end.

“The evening of the election, my joy at his victory in Pennsylvania superceded anything of a personal nature, to be honest. We were here in our home with over 150 people in these four rooms. We had four TVs and people just came and brought things. They brought a bottle of wine. They brought some food. We had all of our rooms in the bed and breakfast have a person in it calling all day. It was just an exciting time. When it ended, I wasn’t sure how the county did, and to be brutally honest, the county chair is just going to tell you, I didn’t care at that point.

“I am standing where you and I are sitting right now, being interviewed by a radio station live when my big TV in that room announced that Pennsylvania went for Obama, which basically sealed deal. That was very important. This house exploded. This house rocked. I’m on the radio and the lady says, ‘Bill, what’s going on?’ I said I think you should hold the microphone up where all the people are yelling and crying, and so emotional. She said to me ‘What did they say?’ And I said I am guessing that Barack Obama just won Pennsylvania. It was remarkable.”

“Then, as the evening went on and I began to do my research around the precincts, I was happy that the three Clarion [Borough] precincts went strongly for Obama. I was happy that one of the township precincts went strongly for Obama and I was semi-happy that in the other Clarion township, he came close. In a couple of other precincts, we came close. Pretty much what we targeted was where we got a lot of votes. Sadly, out in the more rural areas, we did not do well.”

“In these parts of our county, the median income doesn’t come near the national median income. These people who voted against Obama voted against their best interests and many of them were Democrats. The more I looked at that stuff, it made my joy of the result, the sadness of this intermingle, and it made me start thinking what do I do now to get these people to come around. I can’t do anything. But I will tell you who can do it. Barack Obama is going to do it. Barack Obama’s success-and it is going to happen- is going to win these people over. I firmly believe that.”

“My hope for the future rests on Barack Obama and he will be our vehicle to get through this. My goal is at least twelve, maybe sixteen years, so that we can rectify the many things in this country that need rectifying.”