Monday, February 09, 2004
Washington caucus ... a report from the ground floor
As the “Dean Counter” for 10 precincts meeting in a nearby elementary school cafeteria, I arrived at the caucus site more than an hour ahead of the scheduled 10am start. “The Doctor Is In” button on my baseball cap, Dean For America t-shirt pulled over my flannel shirt, I was ready to work the room on behalf of my candidate!
One other person, who had been tasked to assist the caucus convenor, was already there. Although neither of us knew where the cafeteria was actually located in the building, my earliness enabled me to place my Dean signs in all the best positions for visibility and positive effect. (It turned out that my only wall-hanging competition came from a few forlorn Kucinich stickers ... none of the other three campaigns put up signs).
In the calm before the storm, I helped set up the room, placing Dean brochures and bumperstickers in strategic locations. People began to drift in at around 9:30. The trickle became a torrent, which became a flood! Suddenly the place was packed with Democrats seeking to find their caucus sign-in sheets, gathering around the tables their precinct had been assigned to, discussing and comparing their choices in the campaign. Looking to pinpoint Dean supporters, I worked my way backward down the line, quickly running through my entire supply of Dean stickers for the excited caucusgoers. Next to go were the dozen or so Dean buttons I’d accumulated over the last year. The line extended along a hallway, then up a short flight of stairs into a small foyer, out the front door of the school, and well out along the sidewalk! For a few moments, all I could do was marvel at the huge turnout at our location.
Though I tried to check the sign-in sheets against my lists of Dean supporters, I soon realized that such efforts were fruitless. The sign-in sheets were now being passed around at each precinct’s tables rather than staying at a front check-in desk, and the supply of official three-part paper sheets had long since been exhausted. People were now signing in on notebook paper, or on the backs of campaign literature ... wherever they could find the space. There was no point in trying to call supporters who hadn’t shown up yet, both because we were almost to the cutoff time (10:30) and because I didn’t have a clue who was or wasn’t on site. So much for using the brand-spanking new cellphone (my first) I’d just bought in order to make such calls. After a quick run around the site to observe the numbers of people at all the caucuses, I now moved to my own precinct to participate in the actual caucus procedure.
My precinct, as well as two or three others, convened in the caucus overflow room—the school’s gymnasium. While noisy, it was blessedly cooler than the stifling cafeteria across the hall. Our Precinct Committee Officer (PCO), with whom I’d done some Dean canvassing during the last couple of months, started by reading the caucus rules and asking someone to act as caucus secretary. Among the announcements was that our precinct would be electing a total of four delegates to the next level of caucuses (43rd Legislative District on May 1, King County on May 8). The two of them then retired to a a slightly quieter spot with the sign-in sheets and a calculator to determine the initial distribution and viability levels. As in Iowa, only a candidate taking at least 15% of the vote can gain delegates in a Washington precinct caucus.
While they worked up the initial tallies, I worked the caucusgoers. Some Kucinich people told me they planned to switch to Dean because it was clear that they’d fallen well short of viability. One of the Uncommitted voters stood up on a chair to declare that he would soon find a safe harbor with one of the candidates, saying that it was important to maintain the intraparty dialogue to keep attention on us rather than Dubya’s sleight-of-hand ad campaigns. I took that man’s statement as an invitation to grab him and several others who clearly agreed with his ideas, and to bring them toward our circle of Dean people to hear from all of us.
The PCO now announced the first-round results. Our caucus had 66 attendees (fully 10% of the registered voters in the precinct!), which meant that the viability plateau was 10 votes. Only Dean (33) and Kerry (20) were viable; there were 8 Uncommitted, 3 Kucinich, and 1 each for Clark and Edwards.
Before the small groups could think to coalesce into a single unit that could earn a delegate for themselves, I scooped up the Kucinich supporters and collected that Uncommitted speaker and several others in his group, getting them to commit to Dean. Meanwhile, the Kerry people seemed to be just standing around doing nothing; I detected no effort on their part to compete for the attention of those 13 up-for-grabs people.
The time between initial and final tallies passed very quickly. When the convenor announced that all revisions must cease, the PCO and secretary again retired to their corner to do the math. Knowing that we certainly had two delegates, and probably would take a third, I let the Dean group know that it was vital to elect indivduals as delegates and alternates; any such positions we left unfilled could be claimed by another viable candidate (IOW, Kerry).
Our precinct’s final tally came out as 43 votes for Dean (3 delegates), 21 votes for Kerry (1 delegate), and 1 vote each for Clark and Kucinich. Oddly, that Kucinich voter was originally an Uncommitted; all 3 original Kucinich supporters came over to Dean. The Edwards person and two of the Uncommitteds moved to Kerry, but a couple of Kerry supporters switched to Dean even though none of us ever tried to attract them. Dean didn’t lose a single supporter, added the aforementioned Kucinichs and Kerrys, and brought in 5 of the 8 Uncommitteds. My pep talk about delegates worked very well too, as we got to select our 6 representatives—3 delegates, 3 alternates—from a pack of eight interested people (two of whom had joined us between rounds). I’m pleased to report that I’ll be a delegate to the LD and County caucuses.
I’ll share some reflections on the meaning and value of our Washington caucus process, perhaps a comparison with my experiences working the last week of the New Hampshire primary, and thoughts about potential futures for the Dean movement in an upcoming report.
Oh, one final note—the only use I actually found for that cellphone was calling in the overall 10-precinct results from our site (Dean 18, Kerry 16, Kucinich 7, Clark 1, Edwards 1 ... an astonishing 482 participants) to the Dean campaign. The phone will be returned to Verizon before the 15-day trial period expires. In real life I have less than zero need for one and less than zero interest in one.
↑ Close ...
Posted by N in Seattle on 02/09 at 10:26 PM
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