Last year when President Obama came to Newport Beach’s Balboa Bay Club to raise money for his campaign, I knew the Daily Pilot should cover it. But it was on a Sunday and on one was too eager to come in on their day off. So as the Pilot’s city editor at the time I decided to cover it myself. I didn’t need much motivation. I was obsessed with the presidential election going back to the summer of 2007.

I worked every angle I could to get into the event, but since it was a fundraiser access was limited. Obama was opening up his fundraisers to reporters, something not too many politicians like to do, but it was pool coverage. Needless to say, the Pilot wasn’t too high up on the food chain and I couldn’t get in. Not even the clout of society columnist Bruce Cook could gain me entrance (I’m sure he’d appreciate the irony of that joke). Didn’t matter. I was going. I knew I’d get some sort of a story out of it.

When I arrived, I first saw the long line of abortion opponents lining up to shake a righteous poster at Obama. Across the street the Obamaphiles countered with cheers. I interviewed some of the protesters, but their stories weren’t too compelling. I doubted the event would yield much of a story.

Still, I waited. And waited. And baked in the hot sun. I’m patient. I figure I’ll always stumble upon something eventually. I did some more interviews with observers, but nothing too interesting.

Finally, some of those who were in the fundraiser started coming out. I flagged a few along with the other assembled media outside the Balboa Bay Club. It was shaping up to be a react piece from those who met Obama.

Then I got it. Finally. The story. Edith Sandoval and Tony Figueroa, who were a lot more clever than I was, managed to get into the event without buying a ticket. And they got Obama to sign books for them to boot.

Their plot was so complicated I decided to just listen. I put my notebook in my back pocket and listened intently, memorizing every detail, They were so excited I didn’t want to keep interrupting their flow to take down quotes. It was the first time I did that.

And it worked. Boy, did it work.

I recently won first place for best news story from the OC Press Club for the article. When they called my name at the awards banquet at the Island Hotel in Newport Beach I was stunned. Not that story, I thought. I got scooped by a couple of civilians and they give me the award? How ironic. But, I have to say, how gratifying. My hard work paid off. When I got home finally that night — after working a 10-12-hour day — I noticed I had gotten a couple of testy e-mails from a political leader in Costa Mesa who was indignant we didn’t cover some skateboarding event at the county fair. We had covered the event’s first day, but couldn’t get the results on Sunday because we weren’t staffed. She was unsatisfied. Finally, I got a little annoyed and told her about the long day I had just put in on my day off and said that should be testament enough to my commitment to the Pilot. A lot of folks were worried then about the paper since it had suspended publication on Mondays. She forwarded those e-mails to Tom Johnson, who was still publisher at the time, and he called me into his office on Monday. He counseled me to not tell people we were short-handed because it would signal that the Pilot was weak. I agreed. He understood. We had a good laugh about it Sunday before our KOCI-FM (101.5) radio show we broadcast from the Back Bay Bistro.

Life is good. I just won a couple of awards from the press club, including a third prize for my Father’s Day column (which was odd because it was in the theater/music/entertainment category), I moved in with Mona and I’ve started a great new job.

P.S. We had Assemblyman Van Tran on Sunday’s show and off mike he made an interesting observation. He and his staff crunched the numbers and they feel more confident about knocking off Rep. Loretta Sanchez than winning a state senate seat. He has every intention of winning the congressional seat — it’s no Quixotic mission, he says. Only time will tell. That district has a slight Democratic edge in registration, but Sanchez has been winning by very wide margins.

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