My wife, Anne C. Savage accompanied me and Christine Barry, owner of Blogging for Michigan, to the State of the State address on Wednesday. She was there, as were we, with media passes. However, her effort to actually do any photographing of the event was completely shut down by overly-aggressive security and what seems to be a clear effort by Republicans to limit our access.
Click the image above for more photos
From her post about her experience:
We went to our assigned room and I asked the gentleman in charge of the press area about the wait list for photographers. He basically blew me off and then explained that I was not allowed to leave the press room at all until the speech was over. I wasn’t even allowed to photograph in the hall as Senators, Representatives and guests entered the building. […]I’m not surprised that I was not allowed on the floor during the address but it was disappointing. After all this wasn’t a political event like a GOP convention or rally, it was Michigan’s State of the State. It was an address given by the Governor of Michigan to the people of the state, and that includes me. I had no intention of taking bad photographs of the Governor and posting them on my blog, that’s not what I do. I wanted to photograph the event and the people in the room. I wanted to capture the mood with photographs and show others what being in the room during the State of the State was like. That is what I do. As much as I’d love to share with all of you photographs from the State of the State this is all I have. My relentless positive action just wasn’t enough.
Click the image above to see more photos, taken after the address when things were finished.
By the way, Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer’s notes say at the top “Liked 1: Guv’r called me MAJORITY LEADER”. Heh.
