If It's Labor Day, It Must Be Buena Vista

Jamie Radtke and Tim Donner

Yesterday was Labor Day, and that means the launch of the political season in Virginia at the annual Buena Vista LaborFest, which features an old-fashion community parade and stump speeches by political leaders and candidates.  Like the Wakefield Shad Planking each spring, the Buena Vista event began as a Democrats-only political gathering but has become bipartisan (even multipartisan) in recent years.

I captured most of the speeches on video (see below) but, first, to give you a flavor of the day, here are a couple of scenes from the parade as recorded by Steven Latimer.

The first is the lead-off musical group, a pipe band from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) preceded by a Boy Scout honor guard bearing the colors and the second is the marching band from the local Buena Vista local secondary school, Parry McLuer High School.  ("Parry McLuer" is also the namesake of the local middle school.  Is that odd?)

I actually missed the parade, even though I was there. Just before the parade began, I realized I had lost my cellphone. And I mean really lost it, not just misplaced it. One minute I had it -- I checked into Foursquare upon arriving at Glen Maury Park -- and a few minutes later, it was gone. So if anyone in Buena Vista found a Samsung Galaxy S along the parade route on Monday, please send me an email. (I had the phone remotely disabled by Sprint and arranged for a replacement to be sent to me, but it looks like I'm stuck in the 1980s for the next couple of days.)

After retracing my steps three or four times, I gave up and headed to the pavilion to interview some politicians and watch the speeches. Over the next couple of days, look on Examiner.com for my interviews with Congressman Bob Goodlatte, Delegate Ben Cline, U.S. Senate candidate Jamie Radtke, and Sixth District GOP congressional candidate Karen Kwiatkowski.

I videotaped speeches by all those people plus U.S. Senate candidate Tim Donner, State Senator Creigh Deeds (D-SD25), and Deeds' challenger TJ Aldous.

Bob Goodlatte:

Creigh Deeds:

(Shaun Kenney points out over at Bearing Drift that at the one minute mark, Deeds implies that he may be thinking about running for governor again in 2013.)

TJ Aldous:

Ben Cline:

Jamie Radtke:

Tim Donner:

Karen Kwiatkowski:

You can also see previous reports from Buena Vista's Labor Day festivities, from 2008 and 2009.

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