Results tagged “rally”

On Saturday, before the D.C. United-Toronto FC game, about 500 United fans marched from Lincoln Park to RFK Stadium in support of keeping the team in the D.C. area. The march was organized by fans and supporters' groups and had the support of the team.

After two years on the campaign trail, Barack Obama ends his quest for the Presidency tonight in D.C.'s backyard. The rally, to be held in Manassas at the Prince William County Fairgrounds at 9 p.m., is Obama's final scheduled public appearance before Election Day. The event is free and open to the public, though the campaign encourages attendees to RSVP in advance. Expect metal detectors, but will they be checking names at the door?

So this is interesting: Bloomberg did a story on how no one can agree on the size of the crowd for the McCain/Palin rally in Fairfax last week. We were following the story after some controversy broke out over the initial location for the event, and went with the New York Times's number of 15,000, which the paper said it got from "The Fairfax City fire marshal." But the McCain/Palin camp is claiming that 23,000 people were there, while Marc Fisher from the WaPo is saying he counted 8,000, and now Bloomberg reports this:

Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.

So if that's true, where did The New York Times get its estimate? The Obama campaign has come out swinging on the issue, accusing the McCain camp of flat-out lying about it (and other things). For a good read on how crowd estimates are supposed to work and why they are so tricky, head over to Salon.

The New York Times is reporting that the official estimate of the crowd that gathered at a park in Fairfax this morning for the McCain rally was 15,000, well over twice the number of people who could have attended had the event been held at its original, controversial venue at Fairfax High School. The McCain campaign told supporters yesterday that the event had been moved because the high school venue could only hold 6,500 people. Some Fairfax residents and officials expressed disapproval that the Fairfax County school system should never have agreed to host a political rally during school hours, since it violated the school district's own policy against such events.

The McCain campaign has announced that a rally originally planned to be at Fairfax High School on Wednesday morning has been moved to Van Dyck Park in Fairfax County. The campaign told supporters through an email and robo-telephone calls that the event, which will begin at 8 a.m., had been moved because the high school field was not big enough — no mention of the concern voiced by some that the county school system had violated one of its own rules by agreeing to host the rally during school hours. The Post says the high school field house can hold as many as 6,500 people -- so we'll have to see tomorrow whether more than 6,500 people show up to Van Dyck Park.

UPDATE: Point now moot! The rally has been moved amid all the outcry, although no word yet on the new location.

The Post makes the right call on today's rally planned for Sen. Barack Obama at Nissan Pavilion is Bristow, Va. It's going to be a traffic nightmare of epic proportions. You thought the Radiohead debacle was bad? Imagine a free 6 p.m. event open to all comers that will kickoff a historic national campaign for president by a candidate with huge support from young, enthusiastic, politically-minded, college-educated Democrats in a metro area that has one of the highest concentrations of same anywhere in the country.