Word: gunn
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Obama's candidacy has brought a wave of new voters and volunteers into the Democratic Party, but even among them, Gunn, 35, stands out. In addition to being a Democratic delegate and a candidate once again for the state legislature, he now has a line on his political résumé few can match: political director for the Obama campaign in South Carolina, the state that more than any other launched the Illinois Senator's successful candidacy...
...surprises no one more than Gunn, a man who, when he first heard the name "Barack Obama" from some community-organizer friends in 2002, promptly forgot it. "I didn't even think he was African American," says Gunn. "The name sounded foreign to me." Two years later, he connected the name with the face when Obama came to his church to campaign for Inez Tenenbaum, then Democratic candidate for Senate...
...early 2007, having lost his first campaign, Gunn wasn't quite sure what to do. A University of South Carolina graduate and former Gamecocks offensive lineman, he had been involved with community development for the previous decade. And since his younger brother Cherone was killed in the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000, Gunn had become even more devoted to public service. Then, returning from a trip to Washington, he wandered into a bookstore at Reagan National Airport and saw a copy of Obama's second book, The Audacity of Hope. He'd heard Obama's name bandied about with those...
...next thing he knew, Gunn was halfway through the book and had missed his flight back to South Carolina. He recognized in Obama's writing the same ideas about power and justice that had infused his own community-organizing. And he heard the voice of a man who was confident about his beliefs. By the time he had finished the book and arrived home, Gunn knew two things: "This dude has got to run for President--and I have to help...
...time when half the Democratic world seemed to be trying to get onto Obama's not-yet-official campaign, Gunn found that his calls to the Senator's offices went unreturned. Finally, he placed one more call to Chicago and laid it on the line. "I may not know a whole lot about politics, but I know a lot about South Carolina," he remembers saying in his message. "If you want to run for President and South Carolina's going to be an early-primary state, you need to have me involved...