By Steve Huffman
shuffman@salisburypost.com
Rowan County Democrats gathered Tuesday to revel in the role they played in Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency.
“Oh, my gosh, this has just been incredible,” said Nan Lund, organizer of a celebration at George’s Italian Restaurant in downtown Salisbury. “All day long, I’ve been breaking into tears.”
Tears of joy, she was quick to point out.
By early evening, as a big-screen television in the back of the restaurant continued to air footage from the happenings in Washington, D.C., Lund and other local Democrats paused to congratulate one another for their successes.
They toasted each other with beer, wine and iced tea, and fairly giggled with excitement as they described their dreams for the coming four years.
“A toast to today and to the future,” Lund said, holding a draft beer aloft.
She and her comrades raved about Obama’s inauguration speech, given hours earlier.
“All during his speech, I kept thinking, ‘George Bush could never have said that,’ ” Lund said.
“Well, first of all, it was a complete sentence,” chimed in Mike Young, prompting guffaws from all in attendance.
“It was grammatically correct,” added Whitney Bost, her words followed by more laughs.
Those gathered at George’s said last fall’s election resulted in a groundswell of support for Democrats both in Rowan County and elsewhere across the state and nation.
North Carolina, they noted, went for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1976. In Rowan County, Republicans still won, though, as Young pointed out, “It wasn’t nearly as lopsided as it’d been in the past.”
For the record, John McCain was the choice of 61 percent of Rowan County voters. Obama garnered 38 percent of the local vote.
Lund said about 300 people volunteered with the Rowan County Democratic Party, helping with local, state and national elections.
“Some were in for the long haul,” she said. “Others just stopped in for an afternoon and made some phone calls.”
Bost said that early in the campaign, voters would come into the Democratic headquarters on East Innes Street asking for an Obama sign for their yard.
The irony, Bost said, is that those signs were late arriving and were for the longest while unavailable.
“We’d say, ‘We don’t have any signs, but don’t you want to help out?’ ” Bost said. “They’d wind up spending several hours on the phone.”
Lund said those efforts were important.
“We made a point of saying, ‘Signs don’t vote,’ ” she said.
Lund and other local Democrats said one of the things that separated them from their Republican counterparts was that the Republicans relied on “robo calls” ó pre-recorded calls generated by computers ó to get their message out.
“We had an actual person on the line,” Lund said.
Diane Young ó Mike’s wife ó said she found it ironic that snow and ice forced the cancellation of Rowan County schools Tuesday so children could stay home and watch the inauguration on television.
“My son has been glued to the TV all day,” she said.
Liz Tennent said much the same. She said her teenage son also watched the inauguration.
“He said, ‘Mom, I don’t feel like I’m watching a politician,’ ” Tennent said. ” ‘I feel like I’m watching a real person.’ ”
Several of those gathered Tuesday for drinks and camaraderie said the campaign had turned them into lifelong friends, steeling them as one as only efforts of endeavor can.
“It was exhausting,” Lund said of the work that went into the campaign. “But it was all worth it.”