Crews at McCormick Place are busy making final preparations before President Barack Obama arrives tonight for his campaign’s official election results watch party.
Days off for many police officers have been canceled and police and U.S. Secret Service have ramped up security for the president and Vice President Joe Biden, who will spend election night here in Chicago, eventually making their way to the rally tonight.
While ticketed rally-goers aren’t expected to be let into the hall until 7:30 p.m., media trolled around the massive convention center Tuesday afternoon, where a podium from which Obama will speak is positioned near the front of a large stage.
Two towering video screens flanked the stage, and red and blue curtains hung behind the screens.
Thousands of people are expected to attend tonight’s event. But for now, the hall sounded more like a warehouse than a political rally, with crews using cherry-pickers to make last-minute tweaks to speakers and lights mounted on the ceiling.
The atmosphere Tuesday is likely to lack the spectacle of 2008, when an estimated 240,000 people streamed into Grant Park to see a victorious Obama speak, a historic moment marking the election of the first African-American president.
Obama’s campaign chose to keep its festivities indoors this year, where the crowd will be limited to a few thousand die-hard supporters who volunteered to work for the campaign in the final days. For supporters who don’t have a ticket to the event, a CNN-organized gathering in the plaza outside the James R. Thompson Center may be the only public event available.
City and campaign officials have made no announcements of accommodations for a public gathering. Information about Tuesday’s plans had been sparse.
A police source familiar with the department’s deployment strategy Tuesday night said officials were paying special attention to four basic areas: supporting Secret Service security at McCormick Place, high visibility of officers in the downtown area, maintaining order and safety on CTA train lines, and being ready to address any incidents that may spark in neighborhoods once the outcome of the election is known. In 2008, police were caught off-guard by some incidents of disorder in South and West Sides neighborhoods after Obama won.
As Obama has moved around the city Tuesday, commuters have seen temporary road closings to accommodate his motorcade. Workers at the Aon Center were notified Monday by the building’s management that Columbus Drive near the office tower will be shut down Tuesday, with city salt trucks used as barriers. Several other streets surrounding the building will be subject to “rolling closures” because of motorcades in the area, the notice read.
At some point tonight, Obama will join supporters at McCormick Place’s Lakeside Center, the older, black steel and glass building on the east side of Lake Shore Drive. Campaign officials have not said how many people will be allowed into the convention center, but no one will be allowed in without a ticket.
After days of making calls to voters in battleground states, Janesth Rahlan, 20, was one of many Chicago-area volunteers to receive a ticket Monday to the president’s watch party Tuesday night.
He received the ticket at a Skokie Obama campaign phone bank location and summed up his reaction with one word.
“Ecstatic,” Rahlan said. “It (is) one of those things where you get to be a part of history.”
Rahlan said he plans to take public transportation to McCormick Place on Tuesday and arrive around 8:30 or 9 p.m. Before then, however, he said he might work a little more at the Skokie phone bank.
“Just to make a final push,” he said.
City officials finalized a permit Monday for CNN to park a satellite truck and a jumbo television screen on Randolph Street between City Hall and the Thompson Center plaza. The cable network is inviting the public to watch results on the big screen, and it plans to televise part of its election coverage from the location.
The city also issued parade and demonstration permits for a Tuesday night immigration rights rally. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights plans to march from Chinatown to McCormick Place, arriving at the west side of the complex at 8:30 p.m. and remaining there for a vigil until 10:45 p.m. The group will gather at 2333 S. Martin Luther King Dr., which is on the opposite side of Lake Shore Drive from the president’s rally.
Meanwhile, at McCormick Place, hundreds of television reporters and camera crews are setting up on risers near the stage, filing live reports and preparing to broadcast tonight’s event.
Secret Service agents are stationed around the perimeter of McCormick Place and at the entrances to the hall where the event will be held.
People entering the building must empty their pockets and pass through X-ray scanners, like those used at airports, while uniformed Secret Service agents check their bags. Agents with bomb-sniffing dogs are also stationed at the entrances.
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