Fahrenheit 9/11 in Seattle!

Nerves nerves nerves!  Tomorrow night is opening night (kinda), and we're going to have a packed house. Our PAC, Democracy for Washington (DFW), is hosting not one but TWO showings of Fahrenheit 9/11 tomorrow at the Neptune Theater.

Deborah Senn, a candidate for Attorney General in WA, bought out the Saturday night (9:45) showing and began selling tickets for $25 each - wonder where she got that idea?  I called Jim McDermott's campaign manager to invite him as our special guest, but he had a "scheduling conflict".  This turned out to be code for "you've pissed me off by having Jay Inslee host your fundraiser in my district without asking me, so I'm going to host a special showing two nights before you.  Punk."  Such is life - politics means always having to say you're sorry, but never being able to.  Jim and Jay still share the love, but they are trying to reach the same folks, so there'll be tension.

Now, Jay Inslee is our co-host and actually bought the tickets for us - a huge expense and way, way more generous than I expected.  However, this created FEC concerns, so Jay had to sell the tickets at face value, and we did a separate fundraiser at DFW.  This cut into our fundraising ability, but it's still okay.

Now the story:  After a painfully on and off start to this, we sold out the 7:00 show yesterday.  By which I mean, we had some database issues and oversold the 7:00 show!  Some phone orders never got input, and we found ourselves trying frantically to figure out how many tickets we had, who had bought what, and who could move to the later show.  As of this afternoon, through constant effort, begging, pleading, and sacrificing of DFW board member's tickets, we seem to have solved our problems, and now have two happily sold out shows.  We've sold 1,500 tickets in 4 days!  DFW has raised over $2k online, from less than 100 people - most people will be giving tomorrow night.

Now comes the difficult (but fun) part - running a show full of wound-up liberals!  I'm going to the theater at 3:00 to get set up and get ready.  I got volunteer shirts, volunteer badges, a will-call list, signs and donation supplies (read: buckets).  We'll watch the movie, hopefully get it started a few minutes early, then I'll get up and give a little stemwinder.  Our invite went out almost exclusively to Dean people, so in the interest of unity I've invited the Kerry campaign, and I'll introduce them and send them outside to sign up new, energized and enraged volunteers (I hate to send them outside, but the lobby is SMALL).  Jay Inslee will then get up and give a little talk and give us some of the inside view of working with the Bush wackos.  We'll kick out the first show, bring in the next, and do it all again!

This is getting exciting.  I won't sleep tonight, I'm sure of it.  I'm nervous and sick to my stomach.  Too many details undone.  I still don't know how to delegate.  But, we've gotten mentioned in the Seattle Times, we've got a full house, and everybody's looking forward to a piece of history - I really think tomorrow night kicks off the election season.

I'll update you guys after the big event tomorrow!  btw, my wife is graduating on Saturday - she got her MBA!  So, a late night celebrating the turning of the political tide, then an early morning celebrating Mrs. Switzer's 40% increased earning capacity!