Ready for the Big Time

When Eugene Jorissen was a Young Republican at Central Michigan University, he often attended state GOP conventions on a wing and a prayer—sleeping wherever he could, scrounging meals and popping into events just for the fun of it.

Not this time. Jorissen, 65, is attending his first Republican National Convention and it will all be first-class. He'll stay at the Northland Inn in Minneapolis. OK, it's not downtown, and it's not really close to the St. Paul Xcel Energy Center convention site. But it's a whole lot better than sleeping on the floor.

"I don't know where I slept exactly, but it wasn't in a hotel," Jorissen says of his student days.

Attending the Republican convention is a capstone event for the supervisor of Pere Marquette Township. He's not sure what the week will bring, but he hopes to see a lot of it.

His convictions will guide him to some events. He plans to attend a salute to veterans, out of respect for their service. Though he belongs to the Vietnam War generation, he didn't serve because he was already teaching junior high school when the United States sent troops in 1965 and he qualified for a deferment.

Jorissen thinks that the war in Iraq will be one of the most important issues for the convention to address. He doesn't oppose U.S. involvement there; it was the right thing for the country to do, he says. But now he'd like Iraq to be more involved in its own defense.

He also thinks that the convention will address the economy and taxes. That "little stimulus check was a nice thing," he says, "but I'm not sure it accomplished what it intended." So he'll be interested in what McCain and the others are planning for the economy.

Abortion is another issue very important to him, and his opposition to abortion reflects the position of many convention delegates. In fact, "the Republican Party is really taking the stands that I support," he says, anticipating he'll have a lot to cheer about this week.

Jorissen bemoans the loss of old-fashioned conventions. Watching that process in the 1960s was "really fun when you didn't know who was going to be the president or vice presidential candidate," he says. He remembers the exciting roll-call votes: The state of Michigan, the Wolverine State, casts so many votes for "this or that."

Still, he's looking forward to participating. The only thing he won't get to do as an alternate delegate is actually cast a vote. That's not such a big deal with the candidate already selected, and he'll still be "watching, seeing and meeting" with the Michigan delegation.

If he gets to talk to a high-ranking official, he'd like to discuss something near and dear to his heart and job—local governmental control.

"It's important that we don't lose the local control," he says. "The federal and state governments want to tell us how to zone things and how to do things."

National convention, local issues: That's Gene Jorissen in a nutshell.