Three UM students return from DNC in Denver

Three UM students experienced the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week in two capacities – one student as a pledged delegate to the Montana Democratic Party and the other two as participants in a program for credit with the Washington Center.
All three said the highlight of the four-day convention was the acceptance speech Barack Obama delivered to a crowd of about 84,000 people at Invesco Field in Denver.
“The number one most memorable thing was Invesco,” said Scott Martin, a delegate for the Montana Democratic Party and UM political science junior. “Obama’s speech just really hit it home. Everything that had been talked about at the convention was touched upon.”

Three UM students experienced the Democratic National Convention in Denver last week in two capacities – one student as a pledged delegate to the Montana Democratic Party and the other two as participants in a program for credit with the Washington Center.
All three said the highlight of the four-day convention was the acceptance speech Barack Obama delivered to a crowd of about 84,000 people at Invesco Field in Denver.
“The number one most memorable thing was Invesco,” said Scott Martin, a delegate for the Montana Democratic Party and UM political science junior. “Obama’s speech just really hit it home. Everything that had been talked about at the convention was touched upon.”
As a delegate to the Montana Democratic Party, Martin participated in the entire convention – from attending seminars and dealing with the press to fielding pro-Montana enthusiasm following Gov. Schweitzer’s thundering speech on U.S. energy policy.
“Brian Schweitzer did a massive job rallying the troops. He got everyone into it,” Martin said. “It reiterated the importance of Montana in the election. He made Montana the talk of Denver.”
This past summer Martin was elected as one of 17 delegates, 25 when super delegates are factored in. At 22 years old, Marissa Perry, a sophomore majoring in political science and history, attended the convention with the Washington Center, a nonprofit organization that provides select university students with internships and academic seminars in the U.S. political realm.
Perry is Montana’s second-youngest Democratic delegate.
Martin supported Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president and served as a member of her Montana Steering Committee but said that he is now “100 percent behind Barack Obama.”
“It is so easy to make the transition from Hillary to Obama because politically and philosophically they’re almost identical,” Martin said.
“It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but hopefully I’ll get to go again sometime,” Perry said.
Perry was impressed with the depth and quality of Obama’s acceptance speech.
“I think he covered everything that McCain’s campaign has attacked him for and I think he had a sense of humor about it and went into detail,” Perry said.
Perry heard about the Washington Center through a political science class, applied for the program and was accepted. The University of Montana helped pay for just two people, Dustin Leftridge and political science professor Robert Saldin, to attend the conference, so Perry said she had to pay her own way, about $3,700. She will get three credits for her participation in the program.
The 370 students who participated in the Washington Center program spent a week in Denver prior to the convention attending seminars, doing homework, and trying to find fieldwork placements to get them into the actual convention, Perry said. Perry was placed with the Christian Broadcasting Network for her fieldwork assignment. She was provided a press pass and had access to all of the main events. She assisted the network’s reporters and conducted interviews, she said.
Dustin Leftridge, a UM senior in geology and political science, had a different fieldwork experience from Perry. His first fieldwork placement at a hotel 25 miles away from the convention didn’t work out.
“I did what I call ‘create my own adventure,’” Leftridge said. This involved a last-minute position with the Creative Coalition where Leftridge helped with security at the National Black Legislative Caucus reception, attended prominent personalities like Spike Lee.
“The entire thing was festive in the sense that everyone was excited about the prospects,” Leftridge said. “Even though everything was so scripted, the amount of excitement there was unparalleled to anything I’ve ever seen.”
Martin, Perry and Leftridge said they left the DNC with renewed senses of purpose, with the election less than nine weeks away.
“After seeing Obama’s acceptance speech I would be really sad if he lost, so I’m really going to try to get UM students to get out and vote,” Perry said. “We just have to get an overwhelming college turnout and it can be done.”