Greetings loyal subscribers. The campaign season has officially wrapped up and it's truly hard to believe. I honestly can't believe that Thanksgiving is only a couple weeks away! But let me back up and give you a little bit of an update.
I was one of two people in charge of planning and organizing the Election Night Victory Party for all of our statewide candidates here in Sioux Falls. That included the US Senate, US House, Governor, Sec of State races and on down the ballot. So needless to say, it was a pretty crazy process. I've never planned a party before (well, besides Student Senate parties...but those were easy = I make food, you bring drinks). This was on a much larger scale. I had to stay within budget, research venues, vendors, pick out the food, figure out music/staging, and make sure people were actually going to come to this thing. Angel (I consider her my mentor at work...I've learned oh so much from her during the time that I've worked at FOJT) was my partner-in-crime. And thank the Lord she had done this before. So we narrowed it down to which venue we wanted (Ramkota) and which vendors and we were planning on 400-500 people to come. We organized the program and gathered campaign signage to hang in the room. Things were definitely falling into place! And then...I was dispatched to partner with the Kristi Noem campaign and do advance work for the bus tour the weekend prior to Election Day.
First of all, I should say that I was super excited. I love traveling and meeting voters across the state...so I was pumped to get out of the office for a couple days. And then I realized that I would be dumping basically all of this Victory Party work onto Angel's lap. Realizing that this party could completely flop or succeed depending on the work that was put into the planning process, I briefly panicked, and then managed to gather my mental thoughts and move forward. The bus tour came and went (it was a huge success btw) and after returning to Sioux Falls, we had only 2 days before the big day!
After little sleep, Tuesday quickly arrived and Angel and I spent all day at the Ramkota setting things up for the event. We worked with great vendors who managed to get everything set-up and powered up around 5:30 so we even had time to change! Which was certainly something that we weren't expecting.
Then the doors opened.
And 800-1000 people showed up.
Oh my goodness. It was a mad house. But it was GREAT. Thanks to my good friend and former boss, Hugh Weber, he twitpic'd a comparison of the Republican/Democratic parties. Now...you tell me which party looks like more fun. (For more pictures from the party, visit John Thune's facebook page!)
Needless to say, the party went off without a hitch (I think) and every single statewide Republican candidate won! It was absolutely amazing.
We finished cleaning up/tearing down half of the room around 1:30AM and then hit the bar.
**As a note, I hadn't had a drink in 90 days, and I've lost 35 pounds....so please keep my new level of "tolerance" in mind when reading the following section**
I had a tequila sunrise. And was incredibly buzzed. Should've stopped there. But no, I had some celebratory wine. Oops.
**Fast forward to the next morning at work**
Woof.
In conclusion, the election is over. For those of you who are concerned about my future plans, they're up in the air at this point. I'm employed at FOJT until the end of December, so I have some time to figure it out. I'm also going on a cruise in the beginning of January, so that's somewhat inconvenient when it comes to government jobs, but hopefully that's not a deal breaker. If anything develops, I'll be sure to let the blogosphere know.
Also, I'll be in Valpo a week from today. I can't wait to pretend I'm a college student again.
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