By Jill Wagner
Election Night 2008... and I was stationed at Nassau's GOP headquarters in Westbury. By now, we all know the results: the county's Republican incumbents (senators and assemblymen) won re-election, but it was not enough to keep the state senate in Republican control. Thus, it was not a night for major celebration.
So, to lighten the mood, I thought I'd share some secrets from behind the scenes.....
Most of the time, when you see a reporter on tv, it's from the waist up. So just in case you were wondering what my feet look like----here's a peek:
Yes, that's a massive amount of masking tape stretched across my shoes. You might wondering WHY!!!
First, I can tell you this is mostly a joke (mostly!). I'm not on the tall side. I'm about 5'2 and I pretty much wear flat, comfortable shoes when I'm running around in the field. My photographers usually like to have me stand on an apple crate like this one, so it's a better shot in background.
In this case, I was standing on, not only an apple crate, but another platform that was about a foot and a half off the ground---take a look: If I stepped backward too much, I could have fallen about three feet... ouch!
In the end, they took the tape off my feet, but I did stand on the crate the entire night. The only time it looked a little off was when I interviewed one of the politicians. I wound up being a couple inches TALLER than them.
All in all, it was a really fun and exciting night. My live reports lasted about a minute and a half each, but there's a lot of work and preparation that goes into it. The crew got to the location in the early afternoon---- candidates didn't start arriving until after ten p.m. Hence---there's plenty of time to joke around... at my expense!
It's like...Jill Jenga!
Really, though, thanks for the look behind the scenes.
Posted by: John | November 06, 2008 at 12:38 PM