Inside the Tent Contributors
Reuters Inside the Tent has equipped delegates and other attendees in Denver with video cameras to capture the conventions from the ground up. The contributors are not employees of Reuters, and any views expressed are their own.
Republican Contributors
Ashley Barbera
Ashley is a 20 year old student from Eldersburg, MD. She has been involved in Republican politics since she was 16, and last year served as the Chair of the Maryland Federation of College Republicans. In May she was elected by the Maryland Republican State Central Committee to be an At-Large Alternate Delegate to the Republican National Convention. Ashley is currently a first year law student at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and working as the Communications Director for the College Republican National Committee.
Michael Bayham
Michael Bayham, 34, a political consultant from St. Bernard Parish and serves as chairman of the Greater New Orleans Young Republicans and has served on the Louisiana Republican State Committee for the past 12 years. This September, Bayham will be attending his fourth Republican National Convention, his second as a delegate. Bayham received a Bachelor's of Arts with a minor in journalism from Louisiana State University. In 2001, Bayham, then 26, was elected St. Bernard Parish's youngest councilman and has twice stood as a candidate for state representative. In 2004, he served as one of George W. Bush's nine presidential electors from Louisiana.
Robbie Champion
Robbie Champion has been involved in the College Republicans since 2005, serving as chapter chairman and state public relations director. She has been active in Student Government Association, Student Judicial Board, and various other student groups at Maryville College, while spending summers interning in Washington, D.C. She is serving as a volunteer at the RNC Convention.
Bethany Dorobiala
Bethany Dorobiala is the State Chair of the Minnesota College Republicans and Midwestern Regional Vice Chair of the College Republican National Committee. Bethany was elected as an at-large alternate delegate to the 2008 Republican National Convention at the Republican Party of Minnesota State Convention in June 2008, and is the youngest member of the Minnesota host delegation.
Lora Hines
Lora Hines is an alumnus of Friends University (Wichita, Kan.), with a B.A. in History. She was born in Terre Haute, Indiana and raised in Wichita, Kansas. She has previous media experience with "Reader's Digest" and is pursuing a M.A. in Communications at Wichita State University. A delegate to the RNC from Kansas, she is Chairman of the Sedgwick County Young Republicans.
Joseph Irvine
Joseph Irvine is a twenty-year old junior from Utah State University and chair of a growing pro-life movement. Selected by Utah State University to attend the Republican National Convention, Joseph met with politicians from his home state of Arizona and was chosen to be a non-voting member of the Arizona Republican Convention Delegation. Joseph will be serving as a delegate page and will aide in other various and sundry party tasks.
Leslie Rutledge
Leslie Rutledge recently moved to Washington, D.C. to serve as Deputy Legal Counsel for the National Republican Congressional Committee. A native of Arkansas, Leslie worked as Assistant Counsel for Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign and also served as Deputy Legal Counsel in the administration when he was Governor. Leslie has been an activist in Republican politics since childhood. She began knocking on doors at age 2 during her father's campaign for judge. Leslie is currently the Auditor for the Young Republican National Federation (YRNF).
Josh Ruxin
Josh Ruxin is an assistant clinical professor of Public Health and directs three Columbia University initiatives in Rwanda: the Access Project, the Millennium Villages Project, and the Neglected Tropical Disease Control Program. He is also the founder and director of Rwanda Community Works. Ruxin will be participating on the ONE Vote ’08 panel discussing American leadership in global health. Led by Senators Tom Daschle and Bill Frist, ONE Vote '08 is a non-partisan campaign to make global health and extreme poverty foreign policy priorities in the 2008 presidential election.
Ginny Saville
Originally from Maryland, Ginny Saville resides in Kentucky. She is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University with a bachelor in Accounting. Saville and her husband have two children. In 1997, Saville and her partner set up a small eclectic shop in Richmond, after spending about six months vending goods at festivals and booths. They currently have two busy shops that employ six people. Saville is a supporter of Ron Paul. She will be covering the Rally for the Republic and the ongoing Campaign for Liberty.
Justin Smith
Justin has been involved in the College Republicans since 2003, serving as a chapter chairman, state chairman, and national vice-chairman. Justin has also volunteered on more than 50 political campaigns since 1994. Justin was selected as an alternate because of his active involvement in the Missouri College Republicans.
John Steward
John Steward is currently a precinct chairman and a member of the NC Republican Executive Committee. He has been a guest at the last 3 conventions, and this year is an alternate delegate. Steward has been active in GOP politics since he turned 18. He is an avid collector of political memorabilia, and boosts on the largest private collections on the East Coast.
Democratic Contributors
Michael Collins
Michael Collins has been involved in the Obama campaign as a national grassroots activist since October 2006. Collins distributes the Barack Morning - Afternoon - Evening Buzzes daily for the website www.Victory2008.net and is also very active on My.BarackObama.com. He was in front of the podium for Obama's historic presidential announcement and plans to be at his inauguration in D.C.
Doug Edwards
Doug Edwards was director of consumer marketing at Google from 1999 to 2005. He has written freelance pieces for the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle and reported from Novosibirsk as a correspondent for the radio program Marketplace.
Ben Goodman
Ben Goodman, 18, is a Barack Obama delegate from Kennebunk, Maine and serves as the Pine Tree State's youngest delegate. Goodman currently serves as the co-chair of the Maine Legislative Youth Advisory Council, and served as a United States House of Representatives Page in the Summer of 2007.
Derrick L. Jackson
Derrick Jackson is currently the Director of Elections for Washtenaw County under County Clerk Lawrence Kestenbaum. Four days after Barack Obama announced his candidacy, Jackson signed on as a volunteer, and later helped create Michiganders For Obama. Jackson now serves as a delegate to the national convention representing the 15th district in Michigan.
Gina McCauley
Gina McCauley was named to Essence magazine's list of the 25 Most Influential African-Americans of 2007 for her work on What About Our Daughters?, a blog dedicated to combating negative portrayals of African-American women in popular culture. She is the founder of Blogging While Brown, the first international conference for bloggers of color, and Michelle Obama Watch, which follows the good, the bad and the ugly of the media's coverage of Michelle Obama.
Kathleen Miller
Kathleen Miller is a pledged delegate for Obama. This is her first experience involving politics. Miller first heard Obama speak in 2004, and was inspired by his vision for the future. She volunteers her time to Obama's campaign whenever she can, including traveling to Pennsylvania and knocking on doors in her own neighborhood.
Saidah Nash
Saidah Nash is politically active in her hometown of Harlem, New York City and has traveled to both Texas and Pennsylvania to knock on doors, phone bank and get out the vote. In Texas, with record voter turnout, she stepped up to co-manage the Democratic Caucus for District 262 in Houston. Nash is volunteering at the 2008 Democratic Convention and will be stationed at The American Presidential Experience.
Craig Newmark
Craig Newmark is the founder of craigslist, a popular website that offers free classified advertisements and forums on various topics. He now spends his days working as a customer service rep for the site. Newmark is involved with a variety of community efforts and is particularly interested in organizations promoting public diplomacy, mideast peace and new forms of media such as participatory journalism.
Kelly Nuxoll
Kelly Nuxoll, a freelance writer living in Washington, DC, is a national correspondent for Huffington Post's Off the Bus.
Barbara Scarpella Reed
Barbara Scarpella Reed currently resides in Denver and is Photojournalist/Freelance writer. She has collaborated with several highly respected NGOs. Her focus for these organizations has been to provide documentation of medical clinics in remote areas of the world where health care is non-existence or difficult to obtain. Reed graduated with a B.A. in Journalism and Technical Communications from Colorado State University. Her additional studies include Human Development and Family Studies, and Medical Anthropology.
Tracie Reed
Tracie is a 26 year-old graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the 2nd year of their Master of Architecture program. Reed was elected to represent Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention on behalf of the 1st Congressional District in Maine. She was also elected one of Maine's four electoral college members. She blogs at tracie4obama.blogspot.com.
Teri Robnett
Teri Robnett is a Denver, Colorado native and small-business owner where she, along with her partner Greg Duran, own and operate Colorado Rickshaw Company. She's privy to all the funny, crazy, shocking stories heard and experienced by pedicab drivers throughout the city. She is a life-long progressive Democrat and supporter of human rights, with a particular interest in environmental and women's issues. Robnett blogs at www.pedicabblog.com.
Lynne Schwartz
Lynne Schwartz is a native New Yorker whose educational and employment endeavors have taken her all over the country. She has an undergraduate degree in psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University, and earned advanced degrees in psychology from Columbia University (M.A.) and Vanderbilt University (PhD). Schwartz has practiced as a clinical psychologist for many years, initially specializing in child clinical psychology, and for the past 13 years, she has been employed as a forensic psychologist for the State of Michigan.
Lauren Shannon
Lauren Shannon is the Chair of Democrats Abroad in Japan, and a newly elected DNC member. She votes in the state of PA. and works as a managing director of a restaurant in downtown Tokyo. Lauren is a progressive activist, political blogger with the Group News Blog, and freelance writer in her free time. Her recent political experiences include working as a volunteer in Iowa for Gov. Howard Dean in the 2004 primary, as well as working in Tampa Florida as a volunteer for Sen. John Kerry in the fall of the same year.
Mike Smith
Mike Smith is a Washington insider and beltway native who has deep political connections. He has national campaign and convention experience working for a key Iowa (caucus) newspaper. He also worked for a Gannett newspaper in upstate New York. Smith has a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. At the Denver convention, he will cover tech policy platform issues along with his friend Craig Newmark of craigslist. Smith also worked as a volunteer on national traveling press and advance for the Obama for President campaign in Iowa, Texas and Virginia.
Nu Wexler
This is Nu Wexler's fourth Democratic National Convention, starting with the Chicago convention in 1996. In the 2004 election cycle, he served as the executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, managing the state party's Presidential Primary operations and coordinating its general election campaign. Wexler worked in the Podium Operations at the 2000 convention in Los Angeles. Wexler currently works in the Public Affairs practice group of Ogilvy Public Relations, and he's volunteering in the Media Logistics Department of Democratic National Convention Committee.
