Day One in Florida...

Today was a very eventful day! Cydne Watterson, Ashley Monroe and I met up with our bus at about 2:00 AM Saturday morning and arrived in rainy Jacksonville, FL around 8:30 AM. Pretty uneventful bus ride, although sleep on a charter bus is not all that it is cracked up to be. The makeup of our group is very interesting. It is comprised mostly of college students from Southern Virginia University, along with the school's President, Rod Smith. What a great group they are! They came ready to work, and it is wonderful to see that the spirit of conservatism is alive and well in the younger generation. The rest of our motley crew are a few retirees and some semi-empty nesters with an itch for politics.

Upon our arrival in Jacksonville, we met up with the Florida Romney team- Matt, Ryan and Dave Mroz- the guy who organized the on-the-ground Michigan campaign that kept Romney '08 alive to fight another day. Our "Operation Headquarters" are two adjoining spaces in a strip mall. Very spartan in their furnishings, but suited to our purposes.

We were divided into smaller groups and spread out among two locations in the Jacksonville area. The ones remaining with us have formed little sub-groups to work with, and a little friendly competition has started to pop up. Cydne Watterson, Ashley Monroe and I joined up with Richmond's Paula Rogers (sister of Jacqui Gilmartin- a long time church friend) and Monica Whitlock. We have dubbed ourselves "The Keating Five" with regard to our favorite amnesty-loving Senator. The mood in the group is electric! We all hit the ground this morning immediately with phone calls. Our message was to call attention to Gov. Romney's proven record as a fix-it artist, and to invite potential supporters to a rally to be held Monday night for the Governor at the Jacksonville Airport. Mitt will be there, and I plan on recording it for the blog. In addition to phone calls,we're also participating in a targeted door-to-door campaign. The Keating Five didn't get this opportunity today, but we burned up the phone lines all day long.

I had very good experiences on the phone today. Apparently, the Romney campaign is the only one using live callers instead of the "robo-dialing" style of calls. We've found that people are much more receptive if you actually sit down and invest the time to talk. We were able to make a case for Governor Romney, and hearts & minds have been touched by his message. We even convinced one caller to come and join our campaign! He'll be with us starting in the morning. All told, our assembly made 8,940 phone calls and knocked on 600 doors. Not bad for a 12 hour workday on no sleep. I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity to participate in such a cause. It sounds cliche, but what a great country we live in that allows us to actively participate in choosing our leaders. With all of its flaws, you'll still have to agree that freedom and a representative republic is the best experiment in government ever attempted. Thank God for our forefathers and their collective desire to leave us an inheritance of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...

Here are a few pictures from today's travails. More to come...

This is the bus- taken as we pulled to a stop in Jacksonville this morning.

Jacksonville call center- this place was leased to the campaign just last night. It's a pretty nimble organization.

Another pic of the call center.

Dave Mroz- The Mastermind

Happy callers...

This is Matt Waldrip- one of the organizers of our bus trip. As you can see, he's very good at multitasking.


These ladies are what Rush Limbaugh calls "Mittens"

The Keating Five


Hard at work for the Governor...

Marilyn Taggart's graffiti