By Forrest Adams

Chanhassen’s Jake Breedlove, 19, is fired up for Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, and not even a hurt leg and crutches could stop him from taking part in the Democratic National Convention activities last week in Denver.

He described the convention and voting in it to nominate an African-American to be President of the United States for the first time as an “emotional,” “historic” and “surreal experience.”
“I feel like I’ve lived a dream,” he added. “I truly did think that I was at a historic event. I really think it’s going to be hard to top this convention. I can’t think of another set of candidates that would make it more impressive.”

That is, it would have been a dream if he hadn’t been on crutches the whole time. Breedlove said he hurt himself the Friday before he left for Denver falling down the stairs at work.

Now that he is back in town, the University of Minnesota sophomore said when he’s healed up, he’ll be ready to turn the emotion and the message from the week’s worth of Democratic punditry into action. He’s ready to hit the streets “for change” as part of the Campaign for Change in support of the Obama campaign at the University of Minnesota.

A day with a delegate

Breedlove spent most of his time in Denver with the DFL delegates from Minnesota. He said they were accompanied wherever they went as a group by their own Secret Service detail and police officers. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, the first major city mayor to endorse Obama (Jan. 2008), spent a lot of time with the group. Breedlove described the journalist-turned politician as “the life of the Minnesota delegation,” adding: “He was like a cheer leader.”

The Minnesota delegation consisted of “very young to very old,” said Breedlove, adding that he thinks they “represented just about every person you could imagine.” There were 78 of them in all, including 66 percent Caucasians, 23 percent African-Americans, nine percent Asian-Americans, five percent American-Indians and six percent Hispanic-Americans, according to a Minnesota Public Radio report. Breedlove said the group was a hit with the television cameras. So was he. As a young delegate, he was interviewed about Carbon credits for the Jon Stewart Comedy Central show, which was broadcast last Friday.

Breedlove said his days in Denver were filled with political activities. Every morning from 7 to 9:30 the Minnesota delegation shared in a breakfast, at which Democrat officials, including former Vice President Walter Mondale, U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken and U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, spoke. After breakfast they attended business meetings until mid-morning. Luncheons with congressmen and senators and service projects filled much of the rest of the time until the afternoon and evening speeches in the Pepsi Center began.

“There was always something to do at the hotel or the Pepsi Center,” Breedlove said. “There was so much to do during the day. The gavel would drop at 3 p.m. You wouldn’t get back to the hotel until 9 p.m. Then if you went out to a party of something, you wouldn’t get more than 4 hours of sleep.”

From the stage facing the crowd in the Pepsi Center, the Minnesota delegation was to the left, next to California and South Carolina, right behind Colorado.
Obama speech

The speeches on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were effective, Breedlove said, bringing unity to the Party and setting forth a plan for the future of the party. Then came the Obama speech. Breedlove was so tired that he slept for most of Thursday until waking up it time to get on the bus with the other delegates and the security detail to ride to Invesco Field at 4 p.m. He was expecting a dynamic event and wasn’t disappointed.

“It alone made the convention worth going to. I’ve probably never been to a more fun event than last night,” he said last Friday afternoon during a telephone interview. “A lot of people were in tears and really, really moved by it. I was moved by it. I’m not an emotional person. It was incredibly surreal. During the Obama speech, all the energy of the entire Democratic Party met right there.”

Approximately 84,000 people are said to have been in the stadium to hear Obama’s speech. It was seen on television by more than 38 million people, according to Nielsen Media Research.

“It was absolutely mind-blowing to think that we were all there with the same purpose looking at the same person who has brought us hope. It was truly deserving of every person that was there,” Breedlove exclaimed. “Obama delivered on every piece of criticism that the conservative coalitions have delivered at him, and it really painted a picture in everybody’s mind of ‘How could you be a Republican?’”