AU Students for Barack Obama Saturday hit the campaign trail, rallying for the Democratic presidential candidate in Des Moines, Iowa.
The students attended a rally, marched in a downtown Des Moines parade to show support for the Illinois senator and cheered at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, an event for all the Democratic candidates emceed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
"It was surreal in a sense because it's not something you get to do in every lifetime," said Andrew Woods, a member of Students for Barack Obama.
Woods said he enjoyed seeing Obama's speaking style first-hand and learning how campaigning in a caucus state works.
AU students founded a chapter of Students for Barack Obama in September. Membership has since grown to nearly 250 on their Facebook group, according to Heidi Davis, director of communications and media for the group. Twenty-six members went on the Iowa trip, along with several students from Johns Hopkins, George Washington University and the University of Maryland, she said.
The Jefferson-Jackson dinner drew 9,000 Democratic supporters.
The dinner is a make-or-break event, said Dave Simnick, co-director of AU's Students for Barack Obama.
"It was that intense where you had every campaign just crawling in every little floor space in this huge auditorium," Simnick said.
The dinner was set up with big donors and policymakers seated at tables on the court with volunteer supporters in the stands, Simnick said. AU students wanted to show the donors and policymakers how much support Obama had in Iowa, he said.
"Whenever you're trying to convince people in politics, it's all about putting boots on the ground ... filling seats," Simnick said.
Obama gave supporters signs with slogans such as "Change we can believe in" to wave at appropriate times during his speech, Davis said.
Obama's speech was much better than the other five Democratic candidates' speeches, according to Simnick.
"Obama really drove it home," he said.
In his speech at the dinner, Obama attacked the Bush administration.
"A little less than one year from today, you will go to the voting booth and you will select the next president of the United States of America," he said. "Here is the good news. The name George W. Bush will not be on the ballot ... The era of Scooter Libby justice and Brownie [former FEMA director Michael Brown] incompetence and Karl Rove politics will finally be over."
Obama also discussed raising minimum wage to keep pace with inflation, cutting tax breaks for the wealthy, providing health care for all Americans and solving global warming, among other topics.
AU is ranked 12th in the nation out of 600 chapters of Students for Barack Obama in terms of organization and activities, Simnick said.
"The fact that we had so many committed students from AU is huge," Simnick said.
Other activities the group has organized include canvassing in South Carolina and D.C., selling Obama T-shirts and holding meetings to discuss Obama's policies on campus, Davis said. The group is bringing comedian Jamie Kilstein to campus Friday as part of a fundraising effort.
Money raised at the event Friday will go to the club's general account, and then club members will check what they can use the money for specifically, according to Jacob Shelly, an Eagle editorial columnist and co-director of the group.
Because AU is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, IRS regulations prevent the university from supporting political candidates.
Regulations bar campus political groups from raising money for a campaign, but students can fundraise individually, Simnick said. While Simnick and Shelly planned the trip, Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., funded the group's trip to Iowa, Simnick said. Cummings is the Maryland co-chairman of Obama's campaign.
"[We wanted to] show the Iowans [and the] media that we believe in him so much that we were willing to go this far, stop at this many bad fast food restaurants, go this long without sleep to try to prove a point," Simnick said.
