Barack Obama is holding a Town Hall Meeting in Erie, PA, on Friday, April 18th at 10:30am.
I received an email around 4:30pm today announcing that tickets would be given out at the Obama Campaign Headquarters in Erie, PA, beginning at 5pm. I called up to see if I could reserve a few, but was told they would be given out on a first-come first-served basis.
So I hoped in my old minivan and headed up to Erie, about 30 minutes from where I live. I got to the campaign headquarters around 5:15pm and there was already a big crowd lined up outside. I'm a guessing a few hundred people were in line, and the fact that we had one of our first warm and sunny days in months today really helped.
The atmosphere was festive and the turnout was diverse: young, old, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and a lot of little kids running around with Obama signs. It was a beautiful sight to see! One of the local TV news channels was there interviewing people, so I'm looking forward to catching the 10pm news tonight after the debate.
After about 40 minutes of standing in line I got my two tickets and I'm looking forward to being in the audience on Friday. Erie, PA, is one of the larger cities in Pennsylvania, so a big voter turnout there will really help with the primary results next week. Erie is in the Third Congressional District that covers the nortwest corner of the state.