The final day of the convention kicked off with the Virginia delegation gathering near the hotel pool for a couple of group photos. The credentialled delegation totalled 101 members, but when friends and family were added in, the group easily doubled in size. It will be interesting to see the final photo – it is supposed to be 10″x18″ – to see if any of the faces are discernable 😉 The photographer told me that he plans to have it available on his website for folks to order (if they did not pre-order). I asked about purchasing a digital copy and he advised me to get in touch with him after December. We’ll see if I remember to do that or if he sells it to me.
After breakfast, I headed over to the final meeting of the Women’s Caucus. (Pictures to follow.) The room was packed with women of all ages, including some little girls in the row behind me. I snagged a seat on the second row aisle (someone had set them aside for Caucus Chair Mame Reilly and with her permission, I sat there) so I had a fairly clear view of the stage as speaker after speaker came on.
After one speaker finished, a line of women came down the aisle. I thought nothing of it, as people had been moving around during the meeting. They walked in front of the center aisle and opened their shirts. As it turned out, they were anti-choice protesters. Fairly quickly, security came down and escorted the women out of the room.
Michelle Obama spoke to those gathered. To be honest, her Monday night speech was very similar to the one she gave in Norfolk, and the one she gave at the LGBT luncheon was very much a rehash of those two. This one, apparently written specifically for this audience, was different. And she said something that I had been waiting to hear since arriving in Denver: she asked for the support of the Hillary supporters. It was quite ironic since several of us had been talking prior to the start of the meeting and this was the one thing that had never been addressed. It was a shame that it took so long. (More on that in another post.)
After the meeting, I met up with four other members of the delegation and we headed to lunch. As we were chatting, I looked over at the table next to us and noticed a young man who looked eerily like actor Blair Underwood. As it turned out, it was Blair Underwood, one of the prettiest men in America.
After waiting for his family to leave, I approached him to take his picture. Turns out, Underwood is from Petersburg and had been on the floor with the VA delegation the night before. He was gracious and we chatted briefly about his ongoing projects.
We all went our separate ways. With the ongoing swelling in my feet and legs, I gave my pass for access to Invesco to another member of the delegation, who was there as a committee member, who didn’t have a pass to sit with the delegation. She in turn gave her pass to the spouse of one of the delegates, who had a community pass. We had been told earlier in the day that only DNC-issued passes would be allowed to ride the shuttles to and from Invesco, so this was useful to her not have to fend for transportation.
I walked a (very little) bit on the 16th Street Mall, seeing more of Denver in a short time than I had seen all week. I have a charm bracelet and wanted a charm to remind me of my trip here, so I was hunting for a jewelry store. I saw a sign and entered what looked like an office building. As it turned out, the 83-year-old building housed a number of jewelry stores. After leaving there, I picked up a couple of T-shirts and headed back to the hotel.
The hotel was nearly deserted but I ran into some people from the Mark Warner campaign, and a little while later, Warner himself. There was a volunteer from Virginia there who I had met at the state convention. She didn’t have a pass to Invesco. Turns out the Warner campaign had an extra so she happily headed to the shuttle station to get to Invesco.
The DPVA had some extra community passes that they had given to the staff at the hotel. They weren’t sure that the passes had been activated. A quick phone call to DPVA Executive Director Levar Stoney confirmed that they had been and another group headed out the door.
I headed upstairs to get my feet elevated and turned on the TV only to discover that the Redskins were playing, so I watched some of the game. Unfortunately, that caused me to miss our governor’s speech. I did finally turn on CSPAN to catch Obama’s speech before heading downstairs. Once there, I ran into several other Virginians who hadn’t made the trip to Invesco. Over a drink or two, we chatted about the night.
I packed it in about midnight.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I was actually at the Redskins game because a mutual friend of ours gave me tickets since he was going to be in Denver. I ended up leaving at the end of the third quarter and was able to catch Obama’s speech on the radio on the way home (I also tivo-ed, so I was also able to watch it the next day)