Delores Serroka, who has been reading the Advocate as long as we have had one, is a Hillary Clinton delegate to this weekend’s Democratic state convention in Austin. So when she was told to wait by the phone at 4 p.m. Friday for a conference call with other Clinton delegates, she figured it was another one of those pre-recorded pep talks from someone in the campaign.
Turns out it was The Husband himself.
"I was surprised," says Serroka, who was so impressed that it was Clinton that she called her husband, Jim, into the room to listen. "How often does the president call on the phone?"
She says the former president was, not surprisingly, late for the call, and aides had to fill the time with campaign small talk. Clinton also seemed a bit confused at first, probably because he was doing a bunch of these things one right after the other. But he quickly pulled himself together, urging the delegates to go to Austin and vote for his wife. Serroka, who has been on a conference call like this before, says it never fails to amaze her how politicians like Clinton and Ronald Reagan can fill the room with their personality — even if it’s on the phone.
Interestingly, this is not the first president Serroka has heard in person. She saw John Kennedy in New York City when JFK ran for president, was introduced to Richard Nixon when he stopped at the D.C. hotel she worked in during his presidency, and saw George Bush the Elder speak at a neighborhood event in Dallas in the late 1980s.
