The first office-seeker who comes seeking their endorsement.
Each newspaper story about the rally/riot, or about these satellite chapters forming, causes extra waves of new members and even more companies. These new Wide Awake chapters write to Sperry asking for instructions. Quickly outgrowing their cramped headquarters in the long narrow room above Buck’s Drug Store, they quickly raise money to build a temporary headquarters in a vacant lot downtown. In a few days, a crew of 100 construct a semi-permanent canvas & timber event hall capable of holding over 1000 people. Sperry and the leadership crew begin to organize a Wide Awake Convention inside their “Wide Awake Camp” for club members from surrounding towns. On March 21, while new volunteers practice drills and make new uniform packages to be shipped, a visiting politician from Kansas asks to address the boys. In a surprising development, the politician was in the midst of switching parties to the Republicans and was seeking their endorsement, in hopes that the newspaper coverage of an endorsement would help him back home in Kansas.