Cheers, Excitement Over Politics as Cameras Roll

ABCNews On Campus reporter Dominick Tao blogs:

The cameras went live, and the excited shouts and frenetic sign-waving moved along like a wave as the "Good Morning America" cameraman panned the crowd.

Some were screaming "Obama!" Others chanted for "McCain, McCain, McCain."

The political supporters were packed inside, more than a hundred of them. They lined the balconies and filled the bar room floor of the plushly decorated Cheyenne Saloon in downtown Orlando’s Church Street Station, a nightlife hot spot in this central Florida city. They were ushered in from the cold for this on-the-road edition of the morning show, and all of them, it seemed, had something to express.

Politics, as long as the cameras were rolling, took a back seat to just plain fun. A young man with a John McCain bumper sticker slapped across his Polo shirt stood above the crowd on a bar top, hamming it up to the crowd, making faces and grooving to the music as he waved a campaign sign. He was joined by an equally charismatic gentleman with a ball cap and a gold chain with a large cross dangling from it. He got his groove on too, only his affiliations were decidedly from the other camp: He waved a 4-foot-long Puerto Rican flag, With a Barack Obama campaign sign attached to it.

The loud cheers for both elicited calls for quiet from TV producers in the balconies above in the wood-paneled, three-story Saloon. Diane Sawyer and Chris Cuomo were about to go on the air.

During the moments when the cameras were pointed elsewhere, the energetic crowd members laughed and socialized, some of them staring at the array of TV equipment decking the halls of the high-ceilinged building.

The demographic here was a cross section of life. A little girl wearing a too-big Obama hat and a T-shirt decorated with shiny sequins sashayed along the wooden floor, twirling between another woman’s baby stroller and a "GMA" crew’s TV monitor.

An older couple stood on the second-floor balcony, unfurling McCain-Palin signs and looking down at the commotion below as John Mellencamp came onstage, toting an acoustic guitar.

And a few college students sat under an elaborately decorated grandfather clock on the bar room floor, sleepily waiting for the next sweep of the cameras. They were sitting until an older woman, adorned with Obama regalia, sauntered up and began a sort of early morning cha-cha slide to perk up the tired young men. They stood, and laughed along with her.