Tickets vanish fast for 2nd swearing-in

A vendor holds items for sale on the National Mall on Sunday in Washington.
A vendor holds items for sale on the National Mall on Sunday in Washington.

— Hundreds of Arkansans packed into buses and headed to Washington, D.C., over the weekend to celebrate President Barack Obama’s second inauguration.


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Though the nation’s capital was not as jam packed as it was during the president’s first swearing-in, when a reported record 1.8 million people crowded onto the National Mall, it was still hard to get a ticket to this year’s festivities.

U.S. Rep. Tim Cotton, the new congressman from Arkansas’ 4th District, was the only member of the state’s delegation who began last week with any tickets. On Tuesday, he had 34, but those were all spoken for by Thursday.

Each congressman was allocated 198 tickets, and each U.S. senator was given about 350 tickets to hand out as they pleased.

Cotton and the other congressmen from Arkansas are all Republicans. Obama is a Democrat.

Still, members of the congressmen’s staffs said the tickets were given to people from both parties.

“We don’t ask what their party affiliation is” when giving out the tickets, said Doug Coutts, Cotton’s chief of staff.

The congressmen’s inauguration tickets were snatched up quickly, their representatives said.

“They’re all gone,” Rep. Tim Griffin said Tuesday.

“We don’t have any left,” said Claire Burghoff, a spokesman for Rep. Steve Womack.

“I don’t think anybody does,” Justin Gibbs, a spokes-man for Rep. Rick Crawford, added Tuesday..

By Thursday, some people without tickets were still searching for some on the Internet.

Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who is chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said Thursday that the eBay and Craigslist websites had agreed to remove advertisements for the tickets, which are supposed to be free to the public. Sellers on the websites had offered tickets for “thousands” of dollars each, Schumer said.

Gibbs said Crawford’s office started getting phone calls requesting tickets “almost immediately” after the November election.

In total, Crawford’s office received requests for about 240 tickets.

As is the case with other lawmakers, only a small portion of Crawford’s tickets - in his case 21 - were for seated areas near the Capitol. The others were for areas spread out up to four blocks away from where Obama will take the oath of office.

Gibbs said Crawford’s office held two lotteries, one to determine who would get tickets, and another to determine who among those would get seated-area tickets.

“We wanted to do it as fairly as possible,” he said.

Griffin took another approach in giving out tickets.

“It was a first-come, first served deal,” he said, adding that he bumped one ticket seeker who had a physical disability ahead in line so the person could get into the seated section.

One ticket-holder from Griffin’s district, state Sen. Linda Chesterfield, a Democrat, said she contacted Griffin’s office almost immediately after the election for tickets for herself and her husband.

This will be Chesterfield’s third inauguration - she attended Bill Clinton’s second one in 1997 and Obama’s first in 2009.

“It’s always a wonderful time, when this country demonstrates to the world the orderly transformation of power,” she said.

Also in the nation’s capital for Obama’s big day will be members of the Little Rock Central High School marching band, who will march past the White House and play for the president during the inaugural parade.

Obama will be publicly sworn in today, which is also the federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr. This year is the 50th anniversary of the slain civil-rights leader’s I Have a Dream Speech, and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Among the weekend’s events was a National Day of Service on Saturday. Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, served as honorary chairman of that event, a time set aside by Obama to promote volunteerism.

“There is no more fitting way to mark a presidential inauguration than a day of service,” Chelsea Clinton said in a statement.

The crowd for Obama’s 2009 swearing-in was the largest ever at an inauguration. Hotels that year were booked solid weeks in advance. This year, Marriott was advertising space available in downtown hotels days before the event.

Stacie Hawkins, a University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff graduate and organizer of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Inaugural Gala Ball, said she has noticed a decline in interest this year compared with Obama’s first inauguration.

Late last week, Hawkins was still short of her goal of selling 500 tickets to the event, which was Sunday night in a Washington ballroom.

“Because it’s [Obama’s] second inauguration, not as many people are coming,” she said.

Actor Finesse Mitchell and U.S. Rep. Danny Davis - an Illinois Democrat and a native of Parkdale, Ark. - hosted the black-colleges event. Singer Vivian Green performed.

While inaugural-events attendance may be down from 2009’s historic heights, there were still plenty of Arkansans eager to get a glimpse at them.

DuShun Scarbrough, executive director of the Arkansas Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, said slots for his group’s trip to Washington filled up quickly.

In 2009, the group chartered four buses and took about 200 people to Washington.

This year, Scarbrough had to add two buses to accommodate the 320 or so Arkansans and their relatives - some from out of state - who signed up to go.

The group included students from Harding University, the University of Central Arkansas, Philander Smith College, Shorter College and East End Elementary School in Little Rock.

He spent much of last week on final preparations, including making sure the elementary-school students all had matching yellow-and black “bumblebee” scarves so they could be easily found in the crowd and that each bus had a registered nurse on board.

Scarbrough said that if the travelers were willing to sleep four people to a room at one of the three Virginia hotels where he had reserved space,the cost for the trip was $400 per person for the transportation, meals and lodging.

“That type of package sells itself,” he said.

Scarbrough said Obama’s re-election and the fact that millions of white people supported his return to the White House, affirmed King’s vision of a society where people are judged by their character, rather than the color of their skin.

“People are voting for people who think like them, not people who look like them,” he said.

Also making the journey to Washington was at least one Arkansas beauty queen.

Jobrielle Winfrey, who won the Miss Black Arkansas Talented Teen pageant in 2012, traveled there with her mother, Roster Dirden of Little Rock, and her grandmother, Geraldine Dirden.

About 30 supporters of the pageant, all women, joined the three women on a rented bus.

Roster Dirden said Obama’s second inauguration is more significant to her than his first because of all the heat he took from political opponents during his first term.

“I feel excited about this one because of all the things he’s gone through,” she said. “This one takes the prize.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/21/2013

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