Whistlestop trip to inauguration revives a tradition
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It is President-elect Barack Obama's latest nod to history and his political hero Abraham Lincoln: His inaugural committee announced yesterday that he will arrive by train in the nation's capital for his historic inauguration.
The trip on Jan. 17, three days before his swearing-in, is designed to highlight the inaugural theme of "Renewing America's Promise" by reviving a tradition of presidential whistlestop tours and by stopping in cities crucial to the American story, starting in Philadelphia, where independence was declared in 1776, and Baltimore, where the national anthem was written.
Besides the evocation of history, the journey will allow many more Americans to see Obama, either along the tracks or during public events in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Wilmington, Del., where Vice President-elect Joe Biden will get on board.
"As part of the most open and accessible inauguration in history, we hope to include as many Americans as possible who wish to participate, but can't be in Washington," Emmett S. Beliveau, the inaugural committee's executive director, said in a statement.
"These events will allow us to do that while honoring the rich history and tradition of previous inaugural journeys."
Obama, who is patterning his Cabinet choices in part after President Lincoln's team of rivals, is taking another page out of the Lincoln playbook.
Lincoln took a train all the way from the state capital of Springfield, Ill., where Obama announced his presidential bid in February 2007, to Washington, D.C., for his inauguration in 1861.
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Electors met in each state to cast their votes, which are to be counted by Congress on Jan. 6, and formally elected Barack Obama as the 44th president. Though they are not obligated to follow the popular vote, the electors almost always do. Obama won states totaling 365 electoral votes on Nov. 4, well above the 270 needed in the Electoral College.
In New Hampshire, the state's four electoral votes were cast by the two cochairmen of Obama's primary campaign in the Granite State, Senator Martha Fuller Clark and Ned Helms, and two prominent backers of Hillary Clinton, former state party director Kathy Sullivan and former Democratic National Committee member Gaetan DiGangi.
Obama lost the state's first-in-the-nation primary to Clinton in January, but the two united forces, and he nominated Clinton to be secretary of state.
"We were able to come together as a unified whole to support the first African-American president of the United States, which is truly an extraordinary moment for all of us," Fuller Clark said.
There was also another kind of history yesterday: For the first time since 1892, a state will divide its electoral votes.
Obama won one of the votes in Nebraska, which joins Maine as the only states that divide theirs by congressional district. Republican John McCain won the other four in Nebraska.
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Shane E. Tessimond, who is also known as Frank W. Mitchell, was indicted under seal in May by a grand jury on charges of conspiracy, fraud, aggravated identity theft, and bank fraud.
The indictments were unsealed yesterday.
Tessimond, who was a check processor for the campaign, is accused of taking $102,096 in checks meant for the Kerry campaign and, along with a coconspirator named Mark J. Parisi, depositing those checks in local banks by opening up an account under the name "Kerry LLC."
They also ran up $4,000 on campaign credit cards, the indictment said.
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