Meet Oregon's Democratic pages

DENVER -- The youth movement may have propelled U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) to the Democratic presidential nomination, but when he is officially given the party’s nomination on Thursday night, most of the delegates casting their vote are far removed from their youth.

That’s because delegate positions are usually awarded to people who have given the party years of service. And while Obama’s younger supporters may not have had as many years to give, a certain few have still been able to find a way to be a part of his nomination through the Convention’s page program. For Oregon’s two pages, Megan Cox and Francis Gieringer, the work won’t be glamorous, but it will be just as critical to casting a vote.

“It’s a gopher position,” Cox said. “We are responsible for tallying votes. We run and get water.”

Cox is from Happy Valley and is a 20-year-old soon-to-be junior at Tulane University, where she is majoring in political economy. She got the call earlier in the spring that she had been chosen as a page after she had been active in the Oregon Democratic community since before she was old enough to vote.

She helped out with U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) presidential campaign in Oregon in 2004, and with State Sen. Ben Westlund’s (D-Tumalo) gubernatorial campaign in 2006. She supported Obama during the presidential primaries, and earlier this year she found out she would have the chance to be with the delegates when he was officially nominated.

“I was sitting in my dorm room when I got the call,” Cox said. “And I ran over to my friend’s room to gloat a little bit. She’s also a political science major, so she understood how excited I was.”

Cox will be joined by Gieringer, a 19-year-old Hillsboro resident and soon-to-be sophomore at Georgetown University, where he is majoring in government and history. Gieringer says he has been working on campaigns for years as well, and he had already previously interned with the DPO before he decided to try and become a page for the Oregon delegation.
Being selected as a page also involved a second internship with the DPO, which Gieringer has been completing this summer. He looks forward to seeing Obama nominated, but says he had been a Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) supporter.

“I liked the ideas she put forth,” Gieringer said. “I liked how she presented herself.”

While both pages say that being with the delegation is a high honor, the work may be tedious, and the hours will certainly be long. The two anticipate that their days will start at 6 a.m. and will keep going well past midnight.
But the pages seemed undaunted by the long hours, and ready to play their role in what they see as the important task of moving the country on after a rough eight years for the Democratic Party.

“This is the center of it all; this is the political center, and the start of the election,” Gieringer said. “That defeat in 2004 really fortified the party. We had to get our act together. And in 2006 we did. This year I believe we are going to do well.”

As some of the youngest people on the floor, Cox and Gieringer are also looking forward to representing their generation as one that cares about politics and has a vested interest in the country’s future course.

“You hear so much that young people are considered apathetic. I don’t think that’s true at all,” Cox said. “This campaign and so many campaigns around the country are fueled by youth.”

“People our age are owning up to their responsibilities,” Geiringer said. “It’s satisfying; this generation is becoming far more active in politics.”

The two pages do not anticipate a lot of downtime, but should the delegates allow them a moment to breathe, they plan to take in the experience by trying to talk with as many different Democrats from as many different places as they can. And hopefully, they’ll meet some of their favorite political personalities along the way.

“I’d like to meet Jon Stewart,” Geiringer said when asked about the one person he would like to meet at the convention.

“I’d like to meet Chuck Todd, the political director at NBC,” Cox said. “But Jon Stewart is a close second.”