LAKEWOOD, OHIO – Obama-Biden supporters were none too happy about getting shut out of a Biden rally featuring singer Jason Mraz in the Cleveland suburbs Sunday morning.
Doors opened at 8:45 a.m. for the rally at Lakewood High School in the Cleveland suburbs — but Biden was not slated to begin speaking until 11 a.m. Police officers began turning away rally goers at approximately 10:30 a.m., telling supporters that the event was at max capacity.
Yet, inside the rally plenty of standing room was available in the area roped off for the evens. Seats were also open in the bleachers.
“I just want to say that the purpose of this event is to get people excited about voting. ‘Get Out the Vote’ is the theme of these last-minute rallies,” said Barbara Kolesar, a self-described 2008 Obama voter, current volunteer and former Lakewood resident who came back just to see Biden. “We found out from [someone inside] that there’s plenty of room standing. There’s not standing room only. You can sit or stand. There’s plenty of room.”
“I mean, then what’s the point of this if they’re not going to let people in,” Kolesar said. “The whole point of this is to let people in so they could get excited, get their friends to vote and make sure that they vote.”
Two other local women also complained to Red Alert Politics about getting kept out of the rally despite having tickets. One of them, Joanne Rassie, said the slap in the face had a special sting because she is working at the polls on Election Day for the Obama campaign.
At one point Rassie and Kolesar got into an argument with a Biden staffer entering the rally after pleading with him to let them in.
“Ma’am, there’s four events today in Cleveland. The president will be back. There’s other events,” he told them.
That’s not the point,” Kolesar said. “The point is that we’re the electorate.”
“We’re going to all vote for Romney now,” Rassie hollered.
To top it off, most of the supporters inside the rally were attendees of the local high school and were not of voting age. Many of them told Red Alert Politics they were there to see Mraz as much as they were there to see Biden.
Mraz was in and out of the event before the VP ever arrived, finishing his set at 10:45 a.m., at which point some of the rally attendees exited. The Vice President didn’t arrive until 11:40 a.m.
Biden joked during his speech that had it not been for daylight savings time he would have been on time to the rally.
However, a report from the press pool traveling with the Vice President reveals that he was really late because of an extended stop at My Friends Cafe in nearby Cleveland. According the report, Biden and his wife Jill, who also spoke at the rally, posed for pictures, signed autographs and chatted with diners before leaving to head to the rally at 11:30 a.m.
The VP was nice enough to give an attendee of the high school he was about to speak at and her brother a ride to the event in his limo, however.
Update: The Secret Service and police told me at the time that approximately 1,200 people were in attendance at the rally based on the door count, but it could be anywhere from 1,000 to 1,200 because their counting method wasn’t 100 percent reliable. Therefore, based on the amount of standing room left in the gymnasium the addition 25-50 people who were unable to get in to the rally could have realistically been accommodated. Furthermore, for comparison purposes, similar Biden rallies have been capped at 1,500 people in the past.
