I covered both visits by Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain to Montgomery and Chester Counties this week.
I've also been one of those tv viewers switching between the debates and Phillies playoffs the past couple weeks. Unlike the Phils' trip to the post season, presidential campaigning is a scene that is played out every single day, and has been for well over a year now. So while even two visits in the same week are not big news, I photographed them as though they where. I'm also sharing them with my fellow political junkies even though we're not as numerous as those Phillies fans, again like me, who've been clicking all over the excellent slide shows on philly.com's new photo gallery site. (Yeah, that's a plug. The photos there by my sports shooting co-workers are great, and the new and improved web format is wonderful for viewing images).
Plus...it might encourage my assigning editor - in the interest of fairness - to let me cover the Democratic presidential nominee when he comes to town. Stay tuned, hopefully, for a similar post in the next two weeks when Barack Obama returns to our Battleground State.
I joined the traveling press pool on both visits, Tuesday and Thursday. These photos are all interspersed from the two days, which were very similar both in the events McCain attended and the campaign's travel procedure.
The candidate and his staff, the secret service and media all travel in the same chartered airplane. They usually land at the general aviation areas of airports where they all board cars, vans and buses. In Philadelphia, that is Atlantic Aviation - the same place the Phillies charter from Los Angeles landed yesterday morning! That's were I hooked up with them after going through security checks, along with the motorcade drivers.
Waiting on the tarmac for the plane to land was a campaign staffer with coffee for the staff already on board. This was Thursday morning as they were flying in from Wednesday night's debate in New York, and that's Steve Duprey, a close friend and frequent traveling companion of McCain on the right. He is a former New Hampshire GOP chairman and served as a Deputy Permanent Co-Chair at the 2008 Republican National Convention. But he's most known as the campaign's jokester. Newsweek called him "McCain's Court Jester," and he has said he hopes to become secretary of a new federal agency: the Department of Fun.
The candidate's plane, a Boeing 737-400, is an airborne version of his Straight Talk Express bus. McCain sits in first class, the Secret Service agents ride in the middle cabin...
...and the traveling national press corps rides, and disembarks, from the rear. That's Associated Press staff photographer Carolyn Kaster, who is based in Harrisburg, but has been traveling and covering McCain (so she'll miss covering tomorrow's Penn State-Michigan game!). She shot him during the primaries and has rotated coverage with other AP staffers. She will be traveling with him now through the November election. The photographers, reporters, network television and radio correspondents and camera crews who travel with the candidate everywhere he goes reimburse the campaign for their share of costs, including the expenses for hotels, meals, and even the wireless internet connection installed at many events.
Historically, presidential campaigns have used airport arrivals as an opportunity - as in photo op - but also to reward local supporters and politicians with a chance to share the spotlight. Not as good as being on stage with a presidential candidate, but being there to extend a "welcome to our town," still has some cache. On Thursday, the campaign rewarded four Montgomery County volunteers who work out of the McCain/Southeast PA Victory HQ in Blue Bell. They had also attended Tuesday's Town Meeting at MCCC.
A motorcade escort of Pennsylvania State Troopers, in cars and motorcycles, made for the quickest trip up the Schuylkill I'd ever experienced. Not even the Conshohocken Curve or the stretch from City Avenue to Belmont could slow us down.
On Tuesday, McCain stopped at WCAU-TV, channel 10's studios, to do a series of one-on-one satellite interviews with television stations around the country. He was also interviewed by NBC10's Kristen Welker.
Most of the traveling press corps continued onto Blue Bell, but a tighter pool, including me, WCAU photographer Dave Palmer, and shooters from AP, Reuters, AFP, Getty Images, along with reporters from the same wire services, plus Bloomberg, Newsweek, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal waited in a holding room at the station, and watched the senator on a couple video monitors.
Obama supporters came outside as McCain's motorcade traveled along Walton Road past the Plymouth Metting offices of United Food and Commercial Workers International union, Local 1776.
Thirteen year-old Jeff McGee of Hatford came to MCCC with three generations of McGee women; his sister, mother and grandmother.
At both day's events, McCain was accompanied by his wife Cindy...
...and in Downingtown, they were joined by Sen. Joe Lieberman. That's U.S. News & World Report photographer Jeff MacMillan.
