THE BATTLE FOR FLORIDA

THE CANDIDATES - THE SURROGATES - THE SUPPORTERS - THE SIGNS

111  Images

ON NOVEMBER 4, 2008, BARACK OBAMA WAS ELECTED PRESIDENT, in part because of the votes of Floridians, whose support gave him a much needed 27 Electoral Votes.  Earlier in the year, things had not seemed so favorable for Barack Obama.  The decision by the Florida Legislature to move Florida’s primary election up caused the Democratic candidates to honor the pledge they had made not to campaign in states that engaged in this behavior, and as a result, Obama’s name had not even appeared on the primary ballot.

Attempting to make up for lost time, Barack Obama started campaigning in Florida in mid-May, along with John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate.  Even then, it was apparent that Floridians were far more interested in Obama than McCain.  At his very first rally in South Florida, Obama drew a Friday afternoon crowd of over 11,000 at the Bank Atlantic Center, while McCain had drawn a crowd of approximately 700 at a speech he gave several days earlier commemorating Cuban independence from Spain in a hotel ballroom.

On the ground, Obama’s supporters displayed a desire to focus their support for Obama through a more positive message than the McCain supporters did in supporting him. Taking their cue from the speeches of McCain, and especially his Vice Presidential running mate Sarah Palin, their supporters tended to focus more on a negative message through negative signs, including some that were clearly scurrilous - see the 3 teenage girls in The Supporters section as an example.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of both campaigns was their obsessive desire to control their message, as evidenced by the fact that both campaigns refused to allow their supporters to bring their own signs to their rallies.  The signs that you see in this exhibition, as well as the signs that you saw in all the photographs of all the campaign rallies were signs that were made beforehand by campaign volunteers, and distributed to the supporters, either by leaving them in the empty seats before the rallies, or by passing them out just before the candidates arrived.

In the end though, Floridians made the decision to support Obama, making him only the third Democrat to carry Florida in recent times.

(THE PHOTOS IN THIS GALLERY ARE NOT AN ATTEMPT TO PRESENT A FULL REPORTAGE

OF THE EVENTS THAT TOOK PLACE DURING THE 2008 CAMPAIGN

FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN FLORIDA.)

(C) COPYRIGHT 2008