By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
ELON ó Security officers escorted a protester from Latham Park’s outfield Thursday as Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin moved toward the end of her talk at a N.C. campaign rally.
The disturbance was enough to interrupt Palin, who regrouped nimbly.
She invited the officers to bring the protester back.
“Maybe he needs to stay and learn a little bit,” she said.
Palin said all the right things for the several thousand people who braved a sweltering day in mid-October to see and hear the 2008 election season’s true celebrity.
The Alaska governor rewarded the Elon University crowd with phrases that have become her signature or linked to her running mate, Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain.
There was the standard mention of McCain’s being a maverick ó “He is the maverick,” Palin insisted.
She fed into the crowd chants of “Drill, baby, drill,” as she pushed her mantra to drill for domestic oil and natural gas and set the country on a path ó while tapping into alternative energy sources, too ó of energy independence.
“You’re right,” she shouted back. “Drill, baby, drill, and mine, baby, mine.”
She added an emphatic “You betcha” after that.
Following up on Wednesday night’s last presidential debate, Palin mentioned “Joe the plumber” twice in promising that a Republican administration would cut taxes and keep government off the back of small businesses.
But she also deviated at times from her prepared remarks to speak to something she noticed in the crowd.
When talking about children with special needs, Palin, who has an infant with Down syndrome, stopped to remark on a homemade sign in the audience that said an extra chromosome means extra love.
“That’s kinda cool,” Palin said.
The governor spoke in front of the McCain campaign’s “Country First” slogan, draped in a banner across the face of the baseball field’s press box. The bleachers behind her and the diamond in front of her were filled with supporters, curious students and the media.
People began streaming into the ballpark three hours before Palin’s appearance, and the 90-degree day led to heat exhaustion for several people in the crowd.
“This Alaska gal is roasting,” Palin acknowledged as she took the microphone.
Palin typically has drawn large audiences, almost in rock star fashion. Vendors outside the ballpark were selling McCain-Palin buttons, ballcaps and T-shirts, but the more popular buttons said things such as “The Hottest VP from the Coolest State,” “History in the Making” and “It’s a Girl!”
“I try to instill in my girls that women can do anything,” said Dawn Williams, a Graham mother who home-schools her three children, Caitlin, Emily and Gabe. In the hours before Palin arrived, they waited in the shade along the outfield’s warning track in left field.
“What a good field trip,” Dawn Williams said.
The family members said they were definitely McCain-Palin supporters and would not be attending had it been a rally for the Democratic ticket of Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Caitlin, 13, said Palin would stop illegal immigration, and Emily, 11, said Palin would try to lower taxes.
Sarah Carideo and Michelle Wilco, a pair of Elon University freshmen, said they already had made up their minds to vote for Obama.
“I came because it’s just such a monumental thing” for the university, Carideo said. The school also had a visit from former President Bill Clinton in the spring.
The women, both 18, said they were excited to be first-time voters in a sometimes controversial though history-making election.
Carideo said the presidential race is so close that if McCain and Palin win, at least they took the effort to hear Palin and know what to expect in a Republican administration.
A former Hillary Clinton supporter, Wilco said electing a woman as president or vice president was not as important to her as electing the right woman, period.
Wilco, who is from Atlanta, said she doesn’t think Palin is qualified for the vice president’s job. She contended the governor has done a poor job in Alaska, wasting taxpayer dollars.
Carideo said Obama brings a fresh attitude and will be able to put the country back on track. Obama and the seasoned Biden, make a good combo, she added.
As overused as it probably sounds, Wilco said, Obama really will be an agent for change. “He brings people together,” she said.
Joan Setzer and Susan Rives traveled to the Palin rally from Greensboro and are ardent supporters.
Setzer said Palin isn’t the typical Washington bureaucrat. “She’s fresh to me,” Setzer said.
“She has her opinion and she doesn’t mind stating it,” Rives said. “She doesn’t cower down to anyone.”
State Sen. Andrew Brock, R-Davie, said Palin’s selection as McCain’s running mate immediately breathed new life into the GOP. Even though Alaska has only three electoral votes, Brock said, Palin’s background and political philosophy transcend state borders and party affiliations.
The person on the national political stage most like “one of us,” Brock said, is Palin.
“To me, she’s a lot like Teddy Roosevelt … a conservative populist,” he added.
Palin’s theme during much of her 20-minute message Thursday was that the Democratic ticket of Obama and Biden always sees more government as the solution.
“But too often, it’s the problem,” she said, repeating that a McCain-Palin administration would put government on the side of the people. Palin accused the Democrats of concentrating on the Republican Bush administration and the past, because the past “is where you find blame,” she said.
The future is where you find solutions, Palin said.
The governor insinuated that groups working on behalf of the Obama campaign are committing voter fraud and Obama won’t discuss it.
As for the country’s economic problems, Palin said when you find yourself in a hole, “the first thing you do is stop digging.”
A McCain-Palin administration would put a spending freeze on all but the vital functions of government, she said, promising it would balance the federal budget by the end of its first term.
Palin said the United States was not a perfect nation, and it has the ability to learn from its mistakes. But it is a nation of perfect ideals, she said.
McCain, who polls show is in a tight contest with Obama in North Carolina, plans a campaign rally Saturday morning in Concord.