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Published: May 08, 2008 11:08 pm    print this story  

Huge crowd grumbles, struggles to find space to see former president

Christian Giggenbach
Register-Herald Reporter

FAIRLEA — Problems with the venue where former President Bill Clinton stumped in Greenbrier County Thursday led some people to leave before he arrived.

“Have you ever seen anything so ill-prepared?” Ellen McCoy of Williamsburg asked as she waited for the ex-president.

Initially, Clinton campaign officials said the 500-seat Cecil Underwood Youth Building would be used at the State Fairgrounds, but later changed that to the smaller, 170-person, standing-room-only Blue Ribbon Center building, more commonly referred to as the “poultry building.”

An estimated 500 people were waiting in line to enter the building when fire marshal officials told the Clinton campaign that fire codes only allowed 170 people at one time in the building.

Clinton officials, who declined to be interviewed, then asked the crowd to move to an area just outside the building, saying President Clinton would speak from a podium on a walkway connected to the poultry building.

However, the decision was made to move everyone back into the poultry building when the threat of rain and lightning appeared in the sky.

By the time Clinton arrived at the fairgrounds, about an hour-and-a-half after the gates were opened, fewer than 200 people remained.

Jessica Santillo, the state communications director for the Hillary Clinton campaign, was unable to give a reason why the venue was changed to the smaller building.

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