It all started the morning after the election of President Obama.
Let’s just say it wasn’t among Rep. John Campbell’s best days. His party took a thrashing at the hands of angry voters who pink-slipped scores of his colleagues.
Since then he’s put away his razor and has been rockin’ the rugged look.
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How did those lucky people get tickets to the presidential inauguration?
Lots of ways. Seems the congressional members had a variety of ways of dispensing their tickets. In the House, the representatives get 198 tickets. Some are usually set aside for VIPs, friends and family. Then the rest go to constituents.
Rep. John Campbell had a great way of assuring his allotment went to deserving people and not to scalpers and scammers. After giving away about 20% to 25% to the VIPs and family, Campbell had his staff devise a lottery. In comes the clever Carolyn Noble, Campbell staff assistant. She set up an Excel file and after entering in the names of constituents who requested tickets (about 3,500!), she used the software to generate numbers for each one. Then Campbell insisted that the winners had to come in and personally pick up their tickets with a photo ID. A few people dropped out after that, leading Campbell to believe his system worked.
Noble said a staffer from another representative told her they wrote all the names down on little pieces of paper and put them in the proverbial hat to be drawn out. When she heard about Noble’s system she sighed. I know the feeling…
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher did it on a first-come, first-served basis. Those tickets were gone in two days. Simple. Clean. Sensible. The early bird gets the worm, right?
Rep. Adam Schiff in Glendale also had staff do the Excel-spreadsheet thing, but Schiff called his constituents personally to tell them. That’s amazing to me. Schiff said he wanted to vicariously experience the thrill. That’s pretty cool. Several of the winners thought it was a prank and demanded to know if it was a friend who put him up to it. Very funny.
Then I heard an absolutely dizzying story from one congressional staffer who told me how he had taken his primo tickets and traded them for more that weren’t as close. He traded quality for quantity so he could get some of his friends in. Then he kept trading, though, until he got tickets that were practically at Obama’s feet. And this was from a Republican! Seems like everyone wants to be at the inauguration. Again, I know the feeling….
P.S. My friend Robyn finally got a ticket to the swearing-in. After several false starts and dead-ends she went down to her congressman’s office Monday, waited in line for 90 minutes, as I did, and simply asked if he had any leftovers. He did and they were delivered to the hotel this evening. She was so happy.
