Sherrod Brown Victory Party UPDATED

Tonight my wife and I attended the victory party for senator-elect Sherrod Brown (D-Avon) at the Public Auditorium in Cleveland. We got there at about 9:45 pm and immediately ran into bloggers Bill Callahan of Callahan's Cleveland Diary and Roger Bundy of Cleveland Equanimous Philosopher. After some reminiscing and pondering the future we wandered about and talked to some other Cleveland notables like Subodh and Meena Chandra, Ron Register, and Sherrod Brown staffer Phil de Vellis before the program started.

Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Cleveland) was the emcee, introducing a few elected officals and firing up the crowd. Here is a still shot of the Congresswoman:



And here is a very short movie clip to give you a sense of her high-energy delivery tonight:

[NOTE: I have removed the embedded link, but the video is available here.]

Tubbs Jones was interrupted twice by a broadcast of Mike DeWine's concession speech via Fox News on the large screen behind her, which provoked a lot of cat-calling and singing of "Na-Na-Na-Na-Goodbye!" by the boisterous crowd:



When Sherrod Brown emerged with his wife Connie Schultz, his mother Emily Brown, his brothers Bob and Charlie, and various children and other relations, the music was pumping and lights flashing and confetti descended from the ceiling. Sherrod gave a great speech about progressive values and issues, calling on the audience at one point to "never let them question your progressive values, your faith, or your patriotism." I was too caught up in the moment to remember to shoot a movie clip, but here is a photo of Sherrod and Connie at the podium:



He was interrupted at one point by massive cheering when CNN announced that the Democrats had won conrol of the House, but he joined the celebration by jumping up and pumping a fist in the air.

It was a fabulous and inspiring celebration.

UPDATE: I decided that this event deserves more pictures. In this shot Sherrod, wife Connie, daughter Elizabeth, and mother Emily enjoy the music, the cheering and the confetti.

There was a lot of the stuff. It was a red and blue blizzard. In this shot, Sherrod's future daughter-in-law is at far left with a daughter next (didn't catch their names, sorry). The man in the tee shirt is my pal Steve Lieber, I must have run into him at campaign events twenty times or more since January.

Connie didn't speak from the podium but she beamed and laughed plenty and responded to a few calls from people in the crowd ("We love you Connie!" was answered with a mutual sentiment):

Is he looking at me? I was too busy dealing with my camera to notice, if so. Terrible red-eye problems here that I couldn't fix, sorry. At far left is Cleveland attorney Stuart Garson.