Friday, July 30, 2004

"God bless New Jersey!"
Posted by ekdurand@yahoo.com">Emily K. Durand at 2:53 PM -

Now that the balloons have dropped and the last campaign button has been snapped up, I'm slowly recuperating from DNC Week. It's funny how quickly you can get into a routine of sleeping 5 or 6 hours a night and running around the city at all hours...of course, that probably wouldn't last forever, I'm not a college freshman anymore. I have to hand it to the NJ delegates, they managed to look pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the Thursday morning breakfast, which started just 6 hours after the *end* of the gala Governor's Reception. The only person who slept through it was Gov. McGreevey's little 2 year old daughter, who had a stuffed bunny and pacifier to soothe her too, not just black coffee like everybody else.

Thursday's breakfast featured a mini-cavalcade of surprise guests, starting with Howard Dean, who casually strolled in while most people were still fumbling for danishes and orange juice. He had a couple of staffers with him, but no security entourage, and we almost didn't notice him at the registration table. Oops! Another volunteer, Lauren, called out, "Oh! Governor Dean!" and he affably shook our hands and chatted a little. Nice! He had several breakfasts to get to, and while he was at the podium (in classic Dean fashion he got louder and louder and more vehement, but no yowling this time) we had several people stop by and ask us if Cate Edwards, as in John Edwards' daughter, was expected to attend. I hadn't heard anything about this, and I was saying so to a particularly persistent (and heavily made-up) reporter from Channel 7 when she asked, "Well, who's in there speaking now, then?" Uh, how many journalists would mistake the rousing shouts of Howard Dean (you could hear him clearly through the open doors) for a college-age candidate's daughter? This one did. I told her it was Howard Dean, and she scurried off to get her cameraman to shoot some footage, and she nabbed a short interview with Dean later.

As the breakfast went on and the delegates started rooting through the latest morning goodie bag (highlight: a Lucent Technologies neoprene CD-case), somewhere between former N.J. Gov. Jim Florio and Sen. Jon Corzine's rambling remarks, a buzz started out in the lobby that *Ben Affleck* was on his way up. Now, I like spotting celebs as much as the next person, and Ben has been spotted everywhere from front row seats at Fenway to late night burgers with Bill Clinton this week (check out Boston.com's chart of "Where's Ben Been?" here). But I had to ask, what does he have to do with Jersey -- other than portraying a Jersey boy in several Kevin Smith movies? Not a moment later, Ben came through the service door from the kitchen and took the podium to thunderous applause and flashbulbs blinking wildly. In a plain grey suit, he *did* look sort of political -- or at least, like the wardrobe department had dressed him to look like a politician, anyway. He made a couple Red Sox - Yankees jokes, and then explained that his grandfather had lived his whole life in Jersey and was active in local Democratic politics. In fact, when he passed away several months ago, he was buried with a "Kerry For President" button!

Just as I was starting to warm to the idea, though, Ben started babbling about John Kerry and how "great he's been to Massachusetts" and so forth, and then he seemed to rip a page from the Dean playbook and raised his voice, and started pounding on the podium with his fist. He seemed sincere in his belief that Bush must go, but he played it like a kid trying out for a part in a school play -- I for one like my celebrity political endorsements a little more subtle, a la Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, or Art Alexakis, Everclear frontman and Oregon delegate, who managed to sound far more informed than Wolf Blitzer when I caught him on CNN.

So I'm skeptically watching the Affleck rant, and everyone's clapping and taking pictures, and he winds it up with, "Thank you very much! God bless you! And God bless New Jersey!" Sheesh. And this was before I learned that Ben is going on the Kerry campaign bus for a few weeks...I guess he was trying to practice his stump speech skills. When the movie career stalls, there's always public office -- as the GOP knows all too well. Ben then fled back through the kitchen, but it didn't ward off the horde of (mostly female) autograph seekers, who nabbed him at the stairs. Lauren reported being happy he'd just brushed by her ("our shirtsleeves touched!"), and Cheron became the envy of all by getting him to snap a photo with her. What a day -- 14 hours before Kerry's speech, he was already in danger of being upstaged by a constituent.

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