Obama town hall hottest ticket in town

RIO RANCHO, N.M. (KRQE) - This lottery cost nothing to enter and rewarded the fortunate with the historical payoff of tickets for President Obama's town hall meeting Thursday.

With seating limited in the Rio Rancho High School gym, the lottery became necessary to decide who could join the meeting on reforming how credit card companies treat U.S. consumers.

For some ticket winners the town hall will be a first-in-a-lifetime event.

"I just think it would be special to be able to see him in person," Janet Cour told KRQE News 13. "This will be the first president I've see in person."

Another ticket holder didn't enter the lottery but instead had written to the president complaining about the administration's handling of credit card companies.

"I sent the letter off thinking, 'OK, I've done my thing,'" Guy Watson said. "Two days ago I got an e-mail from a person on the administration staff saying, 'You have a ticket waiting for you. Come to the meeting.

"I said I sure will."

Obama's first visit to New Mexico as president actually begins late Wednesday night when he arrives in Albuquerque after delivering the commencement speech at Arizona State University.

The Rio Rancho event starts at 10 a.m. and will be broadcast live on KRQE News 13 and streamed on KRQE.com.

Programming note:

The live broadcast of the president's Rio Rancho town hall will preempt the CBS program "As the World Turns" which will instead air at 12:37 a.m. Friday after "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson."