MUNCIE — A Rushville woman who made her first-ever campaign contribution to a presidential candidate
dined with the recipient, Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday, minutes after he spoke to thousands of supporters at Ball State University.
Two days after Bonnie Lochetta donated $25 to the Obama campaign and submitted a short note with her contribution, she learned she was selected to eat a meal with the Illinois senator as part of the Dinner/Lunch with Obama program.
The two sat side by side and ate hamburgers inside the Arena Lounge at Worthen Arena. The other donors, who were flown in Friday for Obama’s Saturday morning speech and lunch, came from New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New York.
As they all waited for Obama, and as more U.S. Secret Service agents and campaign staff filled the room, their anticipation was palpable. Every time a door opened, the diners jumped a bit in their seats. As it turned out, they got plenty of advance warning, and at 12:35 p.m. stood when they learned Obama was on his way.
He walked in the door a few minutes later, shook hands with all five people, and quickly urged the diners to relax as they sat at the table. He picked up the trays of sandwiches from the center of the table and served each of his guests.
“I promise you that I will be eating, because I’m starving,” Obama said.
One by one, the five took turns telling Obama a bit about their lives. Lochetta, a single mother of three, is the office manager at the Main Street Christian Church in Rushville, her hometown. The others included a retired school superintendent, information technology project coordinator, elementary school art teacher and combination singer, actress and waitress.
After about an hour, it was all over.
“It was definitely one of the top 10 (moments) in my life. Absolutely,” Lochetta said. “Somebody from a little tiny town of Rushville gets a chance to meet the leader of the free world, as they say? At the very least a U.S. senator and really well may be the next president.
“I’ve had a lot of diehard, lifelong Republicans call me and say, ‘I don’t know if I can vote for (John) McCain. I think I’m going to vote for Barack Obama,’ ” Lochetta said. “I’m very excited. I’m definitely going to go home and going to make a lot of phone calls to people who are on the fence.”
Senator Barack Obama wants to fill Muncie’s potholes and shoot hoops with Hoosiers, according to a
seven-minute interview he granted The Star Press on Saturday after his speech at Ball State University.
The Star Press: Muncie has a reputation for having a lot of bad potholes. Is there anything a president can do to fix our roads and potholes?
Obama: There’s no doubt local communities rely on federal and state highway funds. That’s not just true for our roads. But it’s true for our rail lines its, true for our locks, it’s true for our dams. Our sewer lines. Our water reservoirs. We haven’t made the kind of investment we need to make and this is a good time to start investing in our infrastructure...We can pay for it as we phase down this war in Iraq. We can put some of that money toward rebuilding America.
The Star Press: You have a lot of college students really excited about you, who inspired you politically when you were in college?
Obama: When I was in college I tended to look toward the leaders that passed away. Dr. King. Bobby Kennedy. And then later on I was inspired by Nelson Mandela...I was active in the anti-Apartheid movement in college. That was my first real political involvement, when I was a freshman or sophomore.
The Star Press: If you weren’t campaigning all day long, what would you do to pass time while you were in Indiana?
Obama: I think I’d be playing some basketball. I got a little game. I don’t make claims of being top-caliber, but I was a decent high school player. So looking for some good pickup games here in Indiana would be at the top of my list.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s
final stop on his three-day bus tour through Indiana could be summarized in one word: energy.
Obama stated during his speech there that he’d seen young people everywhere become involved in politics, when they didn’t want to vote before.
“That’s the energy we’re seeing all over the country,” he said.
Before Obama came out, Irving Gym on Ball State University’s campus was filled with cheers as if the entire event was a basketball game. More than 3,000 audience members clapped and did the wave and sang cheers for the candidate as if at a pep rally.
As Obama spoke, people loudly yelled in support of what he was saying.
“I’m betting on the ability of ordinary people to come together,” he said. “Ordinary people can do extraordinary things when they’re unified. ... I’m here to report that after 15 months, after meeting hundreds of thousands of people and shaking hundreds of thousands of hands and kissing hundreds of thousands of babies. I am here to report that my bet paid off.”
Mary Baker-Boudissa, 34, hoped her 10-year-old son Stephen would
shake presidential candidate Barack Obama’s hand before the end of his stop in Muncie on Saturday morning.
“If I can get him to shake Obama’s hand, it’s been a good day,” she said.
Baker-Boudissa got more than she dreamed of when Stephen, who attends Erskine Elementary School, was one of the few in the audience to ask Obama a question during the last half of the program.
“Since kids can’t vote, what can we do to have a say in what goes on?” Stephen asked the candidate.
“You seem like a smart kid; I’ve got a daughter who’s 9,” Obama said jokingly. “She doesn’t really like boys yet. Submit your resume when you’re 18.”
“It’s true that you can’t vote, but that doesn’t mean you can’t help,” he said. “Start learning about the world. ... You can also start helping out on our campaign, find out more about what I stand for. ... You could persuade your parents to vote for me.
“The main thing you can do right now is to get more information. The more you learn about the world, the better prepared you can be when you can vote. Not just to vote, but maybe you’ll run for something.”
On Saturday, Obama
backtracked (from his statements Friday about bitter voters).
"Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that," he told the Winston-Salem Journal of North Carolina.
Campaigning in Muncie, Ind., Obama called the controversy interesting.
"Lately there has been a little typical sort of political flare-up, because I said something that everybody knows is true, which is that there are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my hometown in Illinois, who are bitter," Obama told the crowd.
"They are angry. They feel like they have been left behind. They feel like nobody is paying attention to what they're going through. So I said, well you know, when you're bitter you turn to what you can count on. So people, they vote about guns, or they take comfort from their faith and their family and their community. And they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country, or they get frustrated about how things are changing. That's a natural response.
"And now, I didn't say it as well as I should have, because you know the truth is that these traditions that are passed on from generation to generation, those are important."
"What is absolutely true is that people don't feel like they're being listened to," the Democratic presidential contender
said. "So they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives.
" And what we need is a federal government that is actually paying attention. A government that is fighting for working people day in and day out making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream and that's what this campaign is about."
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