comMITTed to Romney!

Update from Iowa HQ

I’m just now getting to posting on yesterday’s events which were quite exciting.

When we arrived at the campaign headquarters the first thing we noticed is how packed it was. Parking overflowed the available lots and continued down the street. We saw many, many license plates from all around the country, the furthest being from Oregon. Inside the building was rather full as well. We grabbed a couple of ‘walking books’ drove to the city of Ankeny to knock some doors. The temperature was not any higher than the day before, but the lack of wind made it infinitely more pleasant to be outside.

First our wheel got stuck in the snow. There are no shoulder on the roads here. We have to park in snow banks because the roads are so narrow. Here it looked like there was a shoulder because the snow was even with the road, but as soon as I drove off the asphalt we sunk about 10 inches.
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Our vehicle and supplies.
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Our first neighborhood of the day.
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A Biden sign next to a deflated Santa Claus (kind of like Biden’s campaign). On my way back to the car a huge dog from this house tried to assault me. I think it’s owners trained it to recognize Republicans.

When we got back to HQ in the afternoon we hit the phones again. We missed a visit by Ann Romney while we were out.

Senator Bob Bennett (Utah) just arrived and we took an opportunity to get a photo with him, so I’ll interject that here.

(I’ll mention now that Senator DeMint of South Carolina is also here and is speaking right now, as well as Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado. I couldn’t get good photos of them.)

While doing phone calls I stopped to talk to a reporter I recognized from local Utah news. He interviewed us a small portion of the that was played on the 2 News at 10 in Salt Lake. The video is embedded below (after a short commercial, bleh). The quote they show of the rotund-ish guy with a beard and glasses is my brother Aaron. They show a guy just before that who says he’s from Houston but the caption says ‘Aaron Gunderson - Spanish Fork resident’, was not Aaron but someone I don’t know. Oops. Also visible in the video is at 1:41 is John Cronin wearing a green sweater.

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The highlight of yesterday was certainly going to the rally which was held at the HyVee Convention Center in West Des Moines. Pictures of that are below. My brothers were interviewed by a German Newspaper while I was running out to the car to get the camera. We were glad to get a chance to see Governor Romney after being here a few days already. He hasn’t been able to come the HQ because of the numerous events he is holding all across the state. At the rally (after Romney’s remarks) my brothers start a ‘ROMNEY’ chant (in Paulian style) that made a lot of the camera crews start swarming around us - so there might be some photos and short video clips in Wisconsin news, Germany and MTV. My parents said they did see us on C-Span. Twice on the news in one day. That’s two times more than the rest of my whole life. (Congressman Buck McKeon of CA is now making the rounds, and he’s now chatting with us about the show 24.) Photos from the rally:

Only part of the camera crews that were there.
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Carl Cameron of Fox News. I also saw David Brody of CBN. He did an interview with Ann Romney.

Here are some other random pictures from today:

John Cronin taking an Ice Cream break
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Me with the ‘Soul’ of the campaign. I don’t actually know his name, but i do know that he was an Evangelical Minister.
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Me, Jason Bonham of MMM and R408, and Vic Lundquist.
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New ERin2008 blogger Paul Johnson working at his laptop.
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..and Vic, who is also hard at work.

As for todays activities. More calling, lots of visitors, not much press surprisingly. Sitting next to me on the floor now is a cute little 9 year old from Ohio here making calls to caucuses - she’s speaking with gusto and conviction. My brothers and I (as well as several others) are going to be sent to some remote precincts where the campaign does not have a precinct leader. We will each actually attend separate caucuses, and be there to represent to campaign: hand out stickers, speak to the group about why they should support Romney, and supervise the count tally and reporting. I’m nervous and excited at the same time. I hope that we are not sent out too far as we would like attend the celebration afterwards. BTW I am told the results should come in very rapidly - we should know who won by 8:30 or so.

My brothers are telling me that Jeff Fuller just arrived. I have not yet met him in person so I’m gonna go see him now.

Good luck to Team Romney!

~Nate Gunderson

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