I covered the Minnesota republican election party on Tuesday evening at the Bloomington Hilton. You can find interesting characters everywhere, but take a presidential election night and a race that had been talked about as "too close to call" days before the election, I found my hopes were high to see bustling action. Despite my excitement to cover the election party of the Minnesota GOP party, the evening seemed to have already plateaued before I arrived around 8:30 p.m. The location wasn't adorned with red, white and blue trimmings, the most amount of noise I heard the whole night was that of a musical group playing an occasional brass band song, and the high points of excitement were constrained to a few reaction cheers.
The majority of the evening passed with a crowd of a couple hundred people standing in front of a projection screen watching Fox News. People milled about back and forth to the bar and occasionally would join in to sing with "Da Band," a brass musical group from Annandale, Minn. hired by the Bachmann campaign to entertain guests. When the election was called and Obama was announced as re-elected president there were a few that shed tears, however most just finished their drinks, stared at their phones or packed up and left.
Da Band played a down-tone song in the middle of an already half-empty room and the night was pretty much wrapped up. Michelle Bachmann, who was supposed to give a speech at some point during the course of the evening, stayed in her hotel room the whole evening awaiting the results of the sixth congressional district to come in before making an appearance. By 12:45 a.m. the results were still too close to call and we didn't expect Bachmann to make a speech to a room of only a couple dozen people. We packed up and headed for my car parked at the Olive Garden.
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