All the hard work of the Obama campaign volunteers paid off.
Those who waited anxiously in the Mountain View campaign office from the break of dawn at 5:30 a.m. until the presidential race results were announced had a lot to cheer for as the president beat his Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
But before the results came in, an ocean of blue shirted supporters filled a room at 820 W. El Camino Real and chanted "Obama! Obama!" and waited nervously for the votes to be counted.
Wrinkle creases lined the foreheads of the volunteers as they watched the state-by-state results on the large flatscreen T.V. in the center of the room.
In one corner of the room, a man paced back and forth telling himself everything would be alright. While staging location director Josh Wolf smiled from ear to ear and hugged volunteers.
"It’s important to me that we do everything we can," Wolf said. "It was a wonderful and successful effort. This was an incredible thing we did today and it paid off."
Volunteers had worked hard to put together the campaign since late October.
Computer screens lined the room with Santa Clara County elections and others with nationwide exit poll results.
A man stood on a table in the middle of the room and announced updates in the race; everyone cheered with each nugget of news.
From volunteers taking pictures with cardboard cutouts of the President and First Lady, to kids eating Twix bars and Rice Krispy Treats, everyone could hardly wait for the results.
And while a majority of the attendees were senior citizens, 15-year-old Katie Woodhull-Fuget also anticipated the results of the race as she entered data for telephone calling.
"For me I got involved because I couldn’t have just let the Republicans win the race knowing I could’ve done something," she said.
This was volunteer coordinator Mary Takanashi’s second time participating in the campaign party.
"Compared to 2008, this campaign is very different," Takanashi said. "Obama has generated a lot of excitement and enthusiasm. We have much more grassroots."
She said the campaign had been phone banking since 6 a.m. election morning and had called more than 6,000 people on Saturday.
"No matter how hard we hope, we can’t predict the outcome of the race," she said.
When Obama was announced the projected 44th U.S. President soon after 8 p.m., the volunteers went wild like a group of school kids let out in the playground for recess. Some chanted "four more years;" others had tears of joy trickling down their cheeks.
But everyone celebrated this win as their own—they raised glasses of sparkling cider and toasted to four more years.
This article was produced through a collaboration of PatchU and the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at San Jose State University. PatchU is a Patch Media initiative to build strong relationships with colleges and universities across the country. The mission of PatchU is to connect students and faculty to opportunities at Patch.
For more information, email PatchU@patch.com or follow us on Facebook.
Don't miss a thing in Mountain View!
Follow on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Get the daily newsletter | Post to our calendar | Share an announcement
