By Jim Stanford on February 26, 2008
On arriving at Teton Village on Friday for the WyObama party, I ran into snowboard star Travis Rice and showed him my Obama T-shirt.
“I told a girl I liked Obama,” Rice recalled of a recent encounter, “and I totally got her digits.” [Translation for those over 40: She gave him her number.]
Then I walked into the Village Cafe and found a table of snowboarders relaxing over burritos and beers. “Are you guys here for the Obama party?” I asked, skeptical.
They reached into their pockets and produced dog-eared, folded, slightly soggy bits of paper: their voter registration receipts. They proudly held them aloft.
Barack Obama has made it cool to give a shit.
About 30 to 40 skiers and snowboarders congregated at the VC for the party, but dozens more registered last week to participate in the Teton County Democratic Convention on March 8.
The turnout was unprecedented, with 15 to 20 people in a line stretching out the door of the clerk’s office Friday afternoon. In one brief span, several people showed up, saw the length of the queue and left rather than wait 20 minutes to register.
Democratic Party enrollment is up nearly 20 percent in Teton County this year, to 3,375. Nearly 600 people registered since October.
While the “throbbing” music hurt his ears, the scene at the Village Cafe must have warmed the heart of Capt. Bob, who has spent nearly four decades in Jackson Hole trying to get ski bums to vote, largely in vain.
In his brief remarks to the crowd, he quoted the Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “The opposite of love is not hate; the opposite of love is apathy.”
Barack Obama is probably the second-greatest recruiter in the history of the Teton County Democratic Party, trailing only his distant cousin, Dick Cheney.
Since Diabolical Dick became vice president in 2000, registration of Teton Democrats has soared by 52 percent. By contrast, Republican Party enrollment has stagnated.
The thought of ski bums flexing their clout at the polls hasn’t inspired universal joy.
I’ve been informed that someone complained to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office about the WyObama party and sent a copy of the flyer to Cheyenne.
By the looks of this graph, Teton County Republicans have bigger worries.
I wore my Obama shirt out that night in hopes of scoring some digits.
Posted under barack obama, democratic party, dick cheney, politics, skids, snowboarding
