From Roll Call’s Heard on the Hill (behind a firewall):

Hell No, We Won’t Go
February 2, 2006
By Mary Ann Akers, Roll Call Staff
Among the tussles and arrests during the State of the Union address Tuesday night was a little-noticed scene involving Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), who has made a tradition out of staking out an aisle seat and, therefore, assuring a network TV appearance with President Bush. (Who cares whether she likes him or not — that’s not the point.)
McKinney got to the floor hours and hours in advance to snag one of those coveted in-the-spotlight seats for her and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.). So naturally, she didn’t want to relinquish them for a bigfoot whom she and Jackson weren’t real happy to see: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Jackson initially went down to the floor with McKinney to claim two seats. Knowing that the section they wanted is normally reserved for Senators, he said, “Since none of these Democrats over there [in the Senate] filibustered Alito, why can’t we have these seats?”
“That makes sense to me, J-3,” McKinney replied, according to Jackson. And with that, Jackson went back to his office, leaving McKinney to protect the seats until showtime. Three hours after Jackson got back to his office, though, his cell phone rang. Uh-oh, it was a frantic McKinney telling him that Sergeant-at-Arms staffers were kicking her out of the seats!
Jackson said he ran back to the floor to mediate, repeating to the Sergeant at Arms officials, “Why are we reserving seats for people who [didn’t filibuster] Alito?” One of the officials who Jackson called “the protectors of the seats for the Senate” explained that was out of his control.
They went back and forth for a few tense moments, but ultimately Jackson and McKinney ended up finding other seats not far away, avoiding a big standoff with Reid and other Senate Democratic leaders.
But HOH couldn’t help wondering, why do McKinney and Jackson go through all the trouble of saving seats for hours on end to shake hands with a president they don’t even like? McKinney didn’t respond to inquiries, but Jackson laughed as he acknowledged, “It’s not that I want to hear President Bush’s speech.”
No, it’s that TV commercials are expensive and the Congressional Black Caucus, by his estimation, has only been invited to the Bush White House twice, so State of the Union is a chance “to show our constituents our proximity to the president. … They need to know their Members of Congress have access to the president.”