Team Maryland
Each morning at 7:30 am our entire Maryland Delegation meets for breakfast and a formal program of events.
These state-by-state meetings represent the “convention-inside-the-convention,” and we’ve been encouraged to arrive especially early on Wednesday morning.
Promises of “a special guest” and free sports jerseys for the first 100 to arrive have been dangled as extra enticement.
I’m finally feeling jet lag, but by 7:20 a.m. I open my hotel door, and Mike and I emerge wearing matching orange Orioles T-shirts. The breakfast theme, we’ve been told is “Team Maryland,” and we should come decked out in apparel representing our favorite team.
As if on cue, Dan Clements, the whip of our Maryland Delegation, emerges from his hotel room directly across the hall from my own.
Dan is wearing street clothes, and comments how great it would be if he’d packed an Obama T-shirt to wear right now, because that, for sure, is the team we are all on.
My husband jumps in to say that we have a whole stack of T-shirts, and, hey, let's all go change into our Obama gear.
Dan agrees, picks a blue Obama '08 shirt from our private stash, and we disappear back into our respective rooms for a quick wardrobe change.
By 7:28 am the three of us roll into the "Team Maryland" breakfast meeting.
There is a marching band, part of the Denver Broncos drumline, playing on stage. The mood is electric and the dress in the room is eclectic. Everybody is fired up and ready to go. Everyone is euphoric.
After all, the night before Hillary Clinton has delivered the speech of a lifetime and everyone in the room is in love with Hillary for being in love with Barack Obama. We are feeling unified and energized.
Before breakfast ends, we have been treated to remarks of encouragement by each of the highest ranking elected officials from the state of Maryland. Our special guest is none other than Maryland’s own daughter, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Her serious and impassioned remarks challenge, inform and encourage us.
-- Cheryl Miller
Carmen Amedori, 52, is a resident of Westminster and was a state delegate representing Carroll County from 1998 to 2004, when she was appointed by then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. to serve on the Maryland Parole Commission. A native of Baltimore and graduate of Villa Julie College, Amedori worked as a paralegal and journalist while raising two daughters, before entering the world of politics. She was one of the few elected officials in Maryland who supported John McCain when he ran for president in 2000, and was an alternate delegate at that year's convention. Her backing has not wavered, and this year, Amedori is the Western Maryland regional director for McCain. She has also been cleared to be a surrogate — meaning she has the blessing to speak on McCain’s behalf when called upon.
Cheryl Miller, 55, and her husband, Michael, coordinate the Volunteers for Obama office in Anne Arundel County. She is an Annapolis resident and mother of two who runs a home-based event planning business. Despite studying political science at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, Miller was not particularly involved in politics until this year. She was invited to a fund-raiser last fall, and soon found herself immersed in the Obama campaign, working phone banks and traveling to Ohio and Pennsylvania to door-knock. This will be her first convention.