A 2008 Election Campaign Reminiscence: Battling for Presidential Candidate Barack Obama in Small Town Pennsylvania (4)

by R. Lee Cook

Regarding the local voter registration imbalance between Democrats and Republicans, Miller put the difference at approximately 3000, a point spread he said, that was difficult to overcome in local elections. Of the county-based political system operating throughout Pennsylvania, Bill explained that there are three commissioners elected to simultaneous four year terms. “You have two of them who will be in the majority, and one will be in the minority. For a long time, years ago, even though we had a disparity in voting, we were able to elect two Democrats to that position.” Sadly, he said he thought this anomaly had existed because voters had valued a candidate’s character and abilities more back then than they do now.

“Yes, absolutely. It transcended” political affiliation, he told me with conviction. Things in the county had changed he said, just prior to the onset of the George W. Bush era. “Prior to the beginning of the Bush era, we had two Democratic commissioners and one Republican. Then what happened was we had a tragic death of one of our Democratic commissioners.”

It so happened, Miller said, that this Commissioner who died had been a former Clarion University Dean named John Shropshire who was also African American. He and Miller were friends. “One of my very best friends. When I think about it, it can move me to tears because he was such a great guy, former Dean of Enrollment, and just a wonderful man” Bill told me, as he shared another of his “personal stories”, this one about Shropshire.

“One day” out of the blue, Miller begins, his friend Shropshire “invited me to lunch.We went to lunch at the local Holiday Inn and we are ordering our food. He says, ‘Bill, here is what I want to do. I want to run for County Commissioner’. I said, ‘Well,
John, here is what I would like you to do. I would like you to go into the restroom, wash your hands and when you are done washing, look up in the mirror. That is the blackest face in Clarion County.’ I said, ‘How are we going to win?’. I said I’m with you my friend, but how are we going to do this?’”

“Here is a man with great character. He had been a township supervisor and knew all the township supervisors. They did not view him in the racial way at all. He did a wonderful job. When he spoke to groups, let me compare. When Barack Obama speaks, there aren’t too many people not paying attention. That is the way John was.”

“He was an imposing figure, maybe 6’4”, 240 lbs, a big man. When he spoke he didn’t raise his voice, but he got their attention. Even folks who were not of the liberal persuasion became enamored of him. He won handily.”

In light of Senator Hillary Clinton’s clear domination of candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 Pennsylvania General  Election Primary, in addition to his being the first African American  ever nominated by a major party to run for the office of the American Presidency, I asked Bill and Judy Miller whether they had been optimistic about the party’s chances in their state, against the challenge posed by the newly unveiled McCain-Palin ticket, as the Republican National Convention held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, came to a close in early September.

“Well, to be brutally honest,” Bill began, “I was fearful. There are people here that- I would say a high percentage- have never met a black person. Shame on them; but the point is, I was fearful. I was fearful that in my own county I wasn’t going to be able to win over the women; some of whom were heartbroken that their stalwart, did not persevere in the whole primary structure and win.”

 “I was nervous,” he continued, “but we had a great person who had headed up the Barack Obama campaign here. Her name was Chris Billetdeaux. Chris is just a go-getter, just a wonderful person. We got into contact real quick, and we both realized what we had to do, and we immediately contracted for our headquarters and got it opened up.”

“We got it geared up with internet and we got donations to furnish this office  and we got ready. We were just ready for ourselves. We were going to do this. But then, all of a sudden, by the grace of God, my phone rang. ‘Hi, I’m Frank Poppy and I’m with the Obama campaign.”

The caller, who was based out of a campaign training office in Erie, Pennsylvania, told Miller he had been assigned to come work in Clarion and needed a place to live. “Well, as you know,” Bill said to me, “I have a bed and breakfast, the Clarion House, and I asked him, ‘How soon can you get here?’

As Bill would soon discover the Obama Campaign had designed an aggressive state-wide strategy and identified select areas they wanted to concentrate their energies in. “They knew that they had to reduce the margin of loss in the “T”, in the surrounding smaller communities like ours”, Miller said. “How would they do that? Well, first of all, they identified the university towns throughout the state and put a circle around them. This sort of tells the whole tale.”