University of Mary Washington - Index

University of Mary Washington - summer08 - Index

Obama. The campaign is based in Chicago, where Reiter,
31, has an apartment. But her work has taken her all over
the country since she joined Obama’s effort about a year
and a half ago.
“I miss home-cooked meals and hanging my clothes in
a closet instead of a suitcase, but I can’t possibly imagine
choosing to do anything else at this moment,” Reiter said
recently from Lafayette, Ind. “I’m in the trenches every day
with some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met. I know
we are going to change the world.”
Reiter said she gained a lot of that confidence at UMW,
where her professors encouraged her to think beyond the
classroom.
“I was instilled with not just knowledge, but the
responsibility to know that I could impact my world,” she
said.
Kerry’s loss in 2004 was difficult to take, she said, and
she briefly moved to New York to work on a reality TV
show. But friends lured her back into politics. She directed
scheduling for Tim Kaine’s campaign for Virginia governor
and then became director of scheduling and advance for
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As deputy director of advance for the presidential campaign of
Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Liz Reiter ’98 (kneeling in front of the
cameras) manages the press on a campaign-trail stop at Jack’s of
New London restaurant in New Hampshire in early January.
Jim Webb’s U.S. Senate race before joining Obama’s team
in January of last year.
He officially announced his intentions to run for president
a month later.
“When I first started, it was a pretty small operation,”
Reiter said. “I jumped in with both feet and helped put
together the announcement tour.”
Occasionally, she said, she fantasizes about a 9-to-5 job
but figures she’d be bored in short order. Instead, she prefers
the thrill of the campaign.
“The tone that’s been set on this campaign is such that I’m
proud to be a part of it, not just because of who I’m working
for, but for the way the campaign is done,” she said. “There
is nothing in the world I’d rather be doing right now.”
Clinton: Cross Country Runner
Enters a Different Kind of Race
Graeme Joeck ’05 always wanted to work on a presidential
campaign, so when months of pestering Hillary Clinton’s
team paid off with a job offer last
summer, he was ecstatic.
Little did he know how quickly
he would encounter nationally
televised drama. He was one of a
handful of staffers taken hostage
in Clinton’s Rochester, N.H.,
campaign office. Even after that
harrowing experience, Joeck said,
he never considered walking away
from the position he’d worked so
hard to get.
“It never really entered my mind,”
said Joeck, who still considers the
November event one of the scariest
of his life. “I’m so lucky to be in
this campaign that I’m so invested
in that I have the ability to shake
it off.”
The ordeal occurred after a man
walked into the campaign office
with what he claimed was a bomb
strapped to his chest and asked to
meet with Clinton about access to
mental health care. The man was
arrested several hours later, and no
one was hurt.
“It’s definitely the type of experience you never imagine could
happen to you or anyone else you know,” said Joeck, 25.
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