By: Greg Mitchell All day today the names of Biden, Kaine, Sibelius, Clinton and Bayh have filled the Web reports of news outlets obsessed with Barack Obama's coming choice for vice president. But remember 2004? It's true, the New York Post got the most memorable scoop on John Kerry's pick for a running mate -- Dick Gephardt, whoops -- but an airline mechanic actually took the "true" honors.
Will it happen again? The moral of this story for reporters: Keep an eye on all those aviation blogs!
The back story: A fellow named Bryan Smith, aka "aerosmith," posted the John Edwards 2004 nod on an aviation message board.
He arrived at work on June 5, 2004, the day before Kerry announced that Edwards was his choice, in Pittsburgh. Smith told NPR that he was passing through a hangar at Pittsburgh airport to get to his work area at US Airways "when I was informed by, I am assuming, Mr. Kerry's people, that I should not peek in that hangar and that it was, in fact, closed for the day."
Naturally, every time he passed near or through the hangar that day, he took a glance.
"Being a curious person, around 6 that evening, I peeked in and I saw they were putting John Edwards' name on the airplane," he said to NPR. "I wasn't the only one who knew this.....They concealed it rather quickly -- they taped paper over the logos. I just happened to peek in at the right time before that occurred. I was just in transit."
A few hours later, at home, he "announced" the pick at an airline chat room, mentioning the "Edwards decals." The discussion at the site showed that "some people believed it and others didn't," he recalled. He gave no thought to calling the media. Smith said he was a registered Democrat and would vote for "John and John."
So if the suspense is killing you: check out the hangars and mechanic sites.
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