In 2008 Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was the center of all things sensational. From “Obama Girl” t-shirts to celebrity endorsements, Obama was surrounded by a flurry of fame.
And Americans’ affinity for the Illinois senator was captured in a YouTube music video “I’ve got a crush on Obama.” The singer of that video, it has emerged, almost landed on Team Hillary. Amber Lee Ettinger tells ABC News that “Terry McAuliffe from the Hillary campaign, he actually took me … out to dinner to try to persuade us to go to Hillary’s side.”
Ettinger, 29, was an actress/model when she was hired for seven hours to shoot the video. At the time, Hillary was far ahead in the polls, and Obama was a virtual nobody.
“People would ask me, ‘what are you working on?’” she told 20/20. “And I would tell them, I’m shooting this video about Barack Obama. And half the people I told were like ‘who?’”
Then ABC’s Jake Tapper blogged about the video. Twenty-four million views later, “Obama girl” has become a permanent part of American campaign history.
Though she was courted by another campaign, Ettinger explained to ABC that she didn’t want to be a “flip-flopper.”
“I was only going to sing and dance for one candidate. I didn’t want to be all over the place.”