Behind the Campaign Scenes

By Chad Austin

Everything looked good on TV. The big banners, the cheering crowds and Sen. Barack Obama delivering his victory speech at Reynolds Coliseum following North Carolina's Democratic primary last month. But looks don't tell the whole story.

"Few people watching on TV had any idea the amount of effort and hours that went into putting that event on," says Barry Joyce,  NC State's assistant athletics director for indoor facilities.

Indeed, several NC State staff members played big roles in helping the university become a campaign hot spot as North Carolina became a key state in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Barack Obama won the N.C. Democratic primary, capturing 56 percent of the vote.

While Obama's speech marked the end of the primary season in North Carolina, the event typified what university officials had come to expect in the weeks preceding the primary. Including Obama's victory rally, NC State saw four members of the leading Democratic presidential contenders' campaigns come to campus – often on short notice.

"Everything was accelerated about 100 times," Joyce says. "Normally we have weeks to prepare for such an event, but in this case we didn't have days to work out all the details. But when we're put in a situation like that, we still want it to be like any other event we host and be a positive reflection on the university."

Adina Stock, who works out contracts and scheduling for athletic facilities, says she normally has at least a week to coordinate the logistical details for events taking place on campus. For the Obama event, she had less than 36 hours.

"We basically had to drop what we were doing and work with them," Stock says.

Gov. Mike Easley endorsed Hillary Clinton at an event at the McKimmon Center on April 29.

Stock's role included working with the Obama campaign to determine its needs for the event, covering everything from security to staging. She then routed the requests to the appropriate people on campus. And if there was something the campaign needed that wasn't available on campus, she helped the campaign secure those items through third-party vendors. For the Obama event, additional tables, chairs, lighting and audio/visual equipment was needed for Reynolds.

"The biggest problem was finding a stage in less than two days," Stock says. "We called everyone we knew, and eventually we found one."

Hosting high-profile candidates also meant coordinating security efforts. With each visit, campus police and transportation officials worked closely with secret service agents and the campaign staffs to determine security needs, outline transportation and parking logistics, and schedule road closures and security sweeps.

To satisfy the large security staffing needs for such a visit, several campus police officers worked on their scheduled days off. The Raleigh police and Wake County sheriff's departments also provided additional officer support.

Campus Campaign Timeline  March 31 – Chelsea Clinton holds a question and answer session with students at Talley Student Center. April 8 – Michelle Obama holds a rally in Reynolds Coliseum. April 29 – Gov. Mike Easley endorses Hillary Clinton following a campus tour. May 6 – Barack Obama holds a victory rally in Reynolds Coliseum following the N.C. primary. Photos: Clinton / Obama

"The most challenging thing for us was pulling together the resources we needed on such short notice," says assistant campus police chief John Dailey. "In turn, we didn't have a lot of time to get the word out to the community about road closures and such, but we tried to balance safety with being less intrusive to the community."

Inside Reynolds, approximately 20 campus facilities staffers worked to get the coliseum ready for the Obama event. Housekeepers and other university coaches and employees whose offices are located in Reynolds adjusted their schedules to accommodate the event. Information technology staff worked to activate phone lines for the more than 300 national and international media members in attendance.

"It truly was a university-wide effort," Joyce says. "I've never been more proud to be part of an effort like that. As a university, we really did ourselves proud because there are few institutions that could have pulled off what we did in such a short amount of time."