Paul Ryan and the Secret Service

One of the annoying awesome things about living in Ohio is the absolute plethora of opportunities to get involved in the presidential race. Or hear about the presidential race. Or have your youtube videos interrupted by campaign commercials. Or, in my case, to receive no less than 5 campaign emails a day (some days up to 10). Maybe one day I'll write a blog post about the emails I get, because they're pretty entertaining.

But I digress. The fact is, as a voter in Ohio during a presidential election year, I have some unique opportunities--opportunities that I simply would not have had were I still in Utah.

One of these opportunities came a few weeks ago. Keshia, my good friend and fellow graduate student, has a friend who works for the Romney campaign. Apparently he's pretty important in the campaign scheme, and he goes with Romney and the crew on most (?) of the campaign stops. I'm not really sure of the details. All I know is that Keshia found out he was going to be in Columbus a few weeks ago and so called him to see if he wanted to meet up.And since I casually know said friend because he worked at the same internship as me in Washington DC the semester before I was there, Keshia asked me if I would like to go along. And naturally, being interested in all things politics, I said yes.

Well, the short of the story is that we got to meet some members of the Secret Service, drove around downtown Columbus for a while (and with me driving, you can probably guess that we showed John the, um, nicer side of Columbus's railroad tracks and run-down areas of town. But only because I was trying to avoid the drunken traffic of downtown's Short North area, which we also got caught in), and then actually saw Mitt Romney's hotel room door. I say this not to be creepy, but just to demonstrate how big-shot John is...because his hotel room was just across the hall from Mitt Romney's. I know. Big shot.

Anyway, somewhere in the midst of us arguing about discussing feminism and politics and Romney's campaign tactics, John told us there was a rally the next morning and if we went he could get us special VIP seating.

So early the next morning Keshia and I found ourselves standing in line at the Romney rally, trying not to look out of place among all the white middle-aged middle-class people waiting to get in. (I told Keshia, who is from Singapore, that I'm pretty sure she was the only Asian there. But then we found another Asian, so I guess there were two there.) And who happened to be standing right behind us in line but another Mormon! We were chatting with the people around us (mostly griping about the people who were trying to cut in front of us in line) and happened to mention Utah. And that was that. Insta-friends.

Anyway, the rally was fine. We mentioned John's name and one of the workers did get us a little closer to the front (although it was a standing room only rally). But. BUT. The best part came after the rally. We were walking back with Jen (the Mormon from the line) to her house so she could give us a ride to my car (I told you, insta-friends), when John called Keshia. "Hey Keshia, do you guys want to be in a picture with Romney?" He didn't have to ask twice. And though Mitt was caught up in interviews and couldn't make it out to the picture, we did get a picture with Paul Ryan. SO. Basically, if Romney and Ryan win the election, I'll practically be famous. Because I did meet Mitt back in 2007 in Jerusalem, and his niece happened to be my roommate. And now I have a picture with Paul Ryan. Like I said. Practically famous.

But this story gets better, my friends. Because last week John was in town again. And this time he called Keshia and said he was in town and had two free hours. So naturally I tagged along (actually we met up at my house, since it was close to where John needed to be that night). But before we got to my house, we stopped at a fast-food restaurant so John could get some dinner. Ever the efficient type, I suggested that John drive through first (we were in two different cars) so he could order his meal and then Keshia and I would go second, since Keshia just wanted fries and it would be much faster that way.

Well, when we got to the window to pay, the woman opened the window and handed us a card. "The man in front of you paid for your meal and asked me to give you this," she said, giggling slightly with an I'm-dying-to-know-what's-going-on-here look on her face. I looked down at the card and saw that John had given the cashier a business card for a guy from the SECRET SERVICE with a number written on it in pen. Immediately I saw the brilliance of John's plan. He was in a dark vehicle and had pulled over after getting his food, waiting for us. And we were two girls in a car just getting fries and the guy in front of us (he was wearing a suit, too) had just handed a Secret Service business card to the cashier with instructions to pay for our food and give us the card.

So the cashier was either thinking "This guy saw these girls and thinks one of them is cute and so gave them his number and paid for their food" OR "This agent is sending a signal to these girls--that he's on to them and is just waiting for them to get their food before he follows them home" or something like that.

Anyway, Keshia and I were laughing about it for days. It was BRILLIANT. And the best part was when we got to my house, still laughing, and John walked over to the car before we even got out and asked for the card because "it has a really important number on it--Paul Ryan's personal Secret Service agent."

Good thing the light had turned green before I could call the number--because I was totally going to call it and see who answered!!!

It's always a good time when you're in Ohio in an election year!