August 26, 2003
So it's official, I'm a "Dean-y-bopper"
By Jim Dallas
Just returned from Howard Dean's San Antonio "Sleepless Summer" rally. The official crowd estimate was 3,500, although it could have been higher or lower. In my humble opinion, there were about as many people there as there were on the floor of the state Democratic convention in El Paso last year (which was about 3,000 plus or minus a thousand). The crowd also raised at least $17,000.
State Reps. Ruth Jones McClendon, Michael Villareal, and Eddir Rodriguez (all "Killer Ds") endorsed Dean.
Dean's speech hit on many of his standard stump speech talking points (for several minutes Andrew was able to recite word-for-word what Dean was going to say about health care reform).
But it alsoincluded an interesting tangent about building schools instead of prisons, which incidentally brought back vague memories of the Nader campaign.
On the other hand, it also included a discourse on why Dean feels he would be tougher on national defense than Bush ("He spent three trillion on givin tax breaks to Enron instead of fully funding homeland security," etc.). Which was nice.
Dean even cracked a joke about odd it was for a bunch of Texas Democrats to be applauding him on his balanced-budget pitch (which received some of the loudest applause of the night).
The energy was amazing. Let's leave it at that.
Update (via BlogforAmerica): The report filed by the San Antonio Express News.
Posted by Jim Dallas at August 26, 2003 12:51 AM
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I probably in the minority here, but I still haven't made up my mind regarding Dean. Can anyone provide a good resource measuring the candidates against one-another?
The official crowd estimate was 3,500
Not sure who the official was, the linked SA E-N article gives "more than 1,000 energetic supporters". But more curious is the low turnout in Austin: "an Austin rally attended by an estimated 400 people"...why so low in Austin?
Mark - I believe that the Austin "rally" was actually just a fundraiser starting at $125. I may stand corrected, but that's what I remember.
I believe that the Austin "rally" was actually just a fundraiser starting at $125.
That would make sense. I found it counterintuitive that the turnout for Dean in San Antonio would exceed that for Austin.
This is correct, Byron.
Crowd estimates tend to vary wildly, so I'd believe anything between the low 1,000s and the high 3,000s. Or 2,000 +/- %50.
I didn't make a total count myself although I estimated that the floor of La Villita was divided up into roughly 60 sectors (it's a tile floor) and that each sector had at least 30 people in it, at least. So that would give us an estimate of at least 1,800.
