Buckeyes For Barack: 7 Days to Save the World

By: Sean Balewski
sbalewski@gmail.com

You saw them on every street corner here in Athens, and especially in Columbus on the campus of the Ohio State University. And as the deadline to register to vote in this upcoming year's Presidential election creeped nearer, Obama Headquarters in Columbus gave one final push. Leading the way in this effort were the student volunteers at OSU.

So, in my first week embedded with the Obama Campaign, I saw a whirlwind of activity. I arrived at Obama HQ early in the afternoon on Tuesday, September 30th, and immediately when I walked in, there in front of me was none other than Governor Ted Strickland himself. The Governor was just stopping by to check in on the progress of the campaign. As one Obama volunteer told me, the Governor has made a strong concerted effort to help out, since Senator Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race. So after my brief glimpse of the Governor, I was whisked downstairs to where all the real action was going on!


At the command center for the Ohio Obama Campaign, I was greeted quite quickly by the head of communications for the Ohio campaign, Isaac Baker. Isaac told me how impressed the campaign was with the overwhelming effort that the student volunteers at Ohio State had displayed. So, of course, I told him to point me in the right direction so I could find the excitement...

So, to the heart of campus I went. And there, right on High Street in a small storefront was the Obama OSU Headquarters. Although small from the outside, once inside I felt as if I were in the center of the universe. The place was a buzz with activity, and there was a palpable vibe in the room! The excitement and sense of importance that I could see on the faces of these young students was contagious. They huddled around maps of campus and shouted out locations that were prime spots for recruitment. One young lady that I talked to informed me that the volunteers had nicknamed this last push, before the deadline of registration, after the popular Madonna & Justin Timberlake song. The nickname was, "7 Days to Save the World." The day I arrived was the first full day of this campaign because it not only was the start of the 7 day countdown, BUT it was also the first day of early voting. So, the Obama camp had devised a special plan on the OSU campus for this "7 Days to Save the World" campaign: they were taking newly registered voters down to the actual early voting site so that they could register AND vote on the same day.

I decided to head down to the voting site to see all the action. Although it was late in the day, there was still a good number of people coming in and out of the site. One woman I talked to, who was a resident of Franklin County, said she showed up so that she could take her absentee ballot home to look up candidates, their stances, and the other major issues on the ballot.


Photo Courtesy of Joe Balewski

Now, the 7 day campaign is over, but to close it off, OSU had a special guest come to campus last Sunday. Although I could not attend, my brother, Joe, a sophomore at OSU, was there, and snapped some good shots of Bruce Springsteen, playing a free concert on behalf of Barack Obama. But don't think that just because registration is over you won't see any of the Obama people; they're still out, and strong as ever, except now, instead of asking, "Are you registered to vote?", they are posing a new question: "Have you voted yet?"

The campaign will only get more and more interesting as we inch closer to the November election, and as I've said before, stay tuned....