It's hard to believe that a year has gone by since that fateful day which began with so much hope. We had worked so hard to make sure that Kerry would be the next president of the United States. So many great people from all over Illinois had stepped up, many for the first time, and lent all of their time and energy to make this country a better place. Certainly we were going to be successful.
Election Night PartyOn election night I hurried back to Chicago from Milwaukee where I had been for a week -- helping keep Wisconsin blue like so many people from Illinois. We watched the preliminary results together -- all the Kerry supporters in Chicago. It was in one of the hotel ballrooms downtown. At first things looked good. The States we knew that were heavily blue, did not dissappoint: New York, Illinois, even Pennsylvania. But then the bad news started coming in: we lost Florida by what looked like a sizeable margin. Things weren't going well. By the time I left the reception, after midnight, people were silent if not altogether glum. [
More photos from election night...]
