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Adventures of a Snowman at Ames Straw Poll

-- Snowman -- 08/28/2007

The day of the Ames Straw Poll was a particularly hot Saturday, especially if you're a Snowman walking around the campus of Iowa State University, trying to bring up the issue of Global Warming to the thousands of Republican activists there to vote for a candidate.

We started out walking to the tent of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Huckabee was wrapping up his welcome speech to supporters, reporters, and on-lookers. After he wrapped up his speech, Huckabee headed over to the stage set up outside of his tent to play a few songs with his band, Capitol Offense. In this Snowman's point of view, they were really good, so I sauntered over to dance my Snowman heart out to the music. A man in a Huckabee t-shirt came up and stood in front of me, apparently he was afraid that I was going to try to get up on stage with the band. After a few minutes of dancing to the music, the Governor's wife came up and joined in my dancing. She, then handed her camera to the "bouncer" and had him take our picture. What can I say, no one can resist the Snowman's charms.

After Huckabee, we walked over to the Rep. Ron Paul tent and enjoyed the shade, while he talked with a few of our volunteers about his ideas on Global Warming. Click here to see video of this.

After I stopped melting, we decided to brave the sun again and head over to Rep. Tom Tancredo's tent. I heard they also had a band on and felt that it was time to get my groove back on. We made our point there as long as we could and then went for a short walk to meet some more people.

Quite a few folks wanted to have their pictures taken with me and reporters and cameramen wanted to take footage and chat. Most people seemed to agree that global warming was definitely an important issue that should be addressed, especially in the presence of an ever-melting Snowman.

As I passed the tent for Sen. Sam Brownback, one of his volunteers took pity on me in the sun and invited me to come inside their tent - the only one with air conditioning. The respite from the heat was welcome, but short-lived. I explained my cause and in a short while, I was off to the next candidate's tent.

I walked over to the Gov. Mitt Romney tent, the Nada's were playing, and clearly this Snowman cannot resist the music. I stayed a short while and then moved on..

At this point, I decided to call it a day, before I melted to a puddle at the doors of the Hilton Coliseum. In the end, I was encouraged by the response I got from the crowd. The numbers of people who acknowledged Global Warming as a threat that needs to be addressed immediately was very encouraging. In fact, we even signed up a few Republican activists to volunteer for our cause. All in all, it was a good event, and I'm looking forward to my next appearance, at the Democratic Debate in Des Moines, next week. Wish me luck, and I'll keep you posted.

Action Center

by Andrew Snow

by Andrew Snow