Tonight was my first Jefferson-Jackson Dinner and oh what a year to start. As I travelled down Rt.1 at 5:30 I passed Tommywonk and his lovely date in a convertible with the top down. Damn, even Tommy looks cool heading out for a great night of wonkiness. As I walked into the Dover Downs hotel I caught up to Dana Rohrbough and Joe Rogalski, both of the Markell Campaign, they pointed me in the right direction, which was to check in and go through the metal detectors. Word is that Carper got frisked when he came in, and I bet he liked it.
Once past the Secret Service, I got to have a moment with Jack Markell and then I was off to find a table. I’ll tell you what, you get some crappy seats when you don’t donate a boatload of money. I caught up with Mike Matthews while searching and we ended up sitting with Earl Jaques and his family.
Matthews is an awesome person to sit with, because he knows everyone and he laughs at my inane jokes. His favorite of my jokes this evening was my response to a question about whether Dominque was at the event. “She’s at the white’s only table,” I said. He was still chuckling at that one 30 minutes later.
John Kowalko came and hung out with us for a little while. I cannot decide in my relationship with John whether he is the groupie or if I am. I think I’m the groupie.
The most interesting person to watch tonight was Karen Weldin Stewart. I think she must have bet someone that she could shake the hand of every person in the room. She wasn’t going to let pesky speeches, prayers or awards get between her and her goal, so she worked the tables non-stop. Literally non-stop. I really wish she would have stopped.
She seems to have developed a following of haters. After the festivities, I was polling people to see if any of them knew what exactly McDowell and her did at R-WAY to make money. I got a lot of blank stares and then wild stories about her financial well-being (or lack thereof). For a while, she was reportedly hanging out with Tom Savage (her independent opponent who was inexplicably at a Democratic event).
Back to the people that matter, Ruth Ann gave her last address as Governor to the J-J dinner. Ugh. It was like a who’s who of crappy Democrats for a while, with Daniello and Minner and later, Carper. Jack Markell and John Carney both gave excellent speeches that made me proud. There is absolutely no doubt that the hachet has been buried between these two. And during Carpers speech, I got the distinct impression that Carney had the inside track on the Senate seat.
Carper must have been given the job of introducing Biden, so as to make Biden look even better by contrast. Before his speech, I saw him shaking hands with Chris Coons and trying out his new word, “JoeBama”(rhymes with “yo momma”). During his speech, he wanted everyone to try out his new word. As I told Cassandra, I kept trying to say it, but every time I opened my mouth, all that came out was STFU. Next year, let’s not give the job of stalling to Tom Carper. I would have shot myself, but I would have missed Biden.
When Biden came on stage (you could tell he was coming before he got there because of the Secret Service detail.) the place went wild. Joe Started off slowly, thanking Minner (ugh), talking about the Bayard Family, and talking about Thurman Adama (ugh). But once he got going, he kicked ass. About halfway through, he seemed to find the sweet spot and he opened up his lungs and let loose. The crowd loved it, and so did I.
Afterward, John Kowalko introduced me to Darlene Battle, of ACORN. She and I spoke about the bum rap that ACORN has been getting in the past few weeks. She told me about the calls, emails and death threats that she has gotten in the past 2 weeks. John couldn’t stop telling me about how much Darlene did. How she worked 60 hours a week to help the community. How she went 3 months without a paycheck because things were tight. I promised Darlene that I would be in touch to set up an interview.
All in all, it was a fun night. I got to hang with Mike Matthews, Cassandra, Tommywonk, Unstable Isotope and Stella Bluez. I love our readers, our bloggers and our state. It was a good evening to be with good people.