The Caucus That Grew And Grew All Night

Wow. There's so much to write about that it's Thursday and I still haven't found the energy to give you my summary of how we spent Election Night. It was surprising and disturbing and wonderful all at the same time. Democracy is not always fun, but it still beats armed revolutions as a method of transferring power, doesn't it? I think so.

Let me start by saying that I have been attending precinct caucuses every other year (that's how often they are held) since I turned 18, which was 18 years ago. I had been thinking that I missed one right after the LSG was born, but upon closer reflection, I realize that was an actual (small) election, not a caucus year. I did miss one caucus when the LSG was little and the weather got really scary after I got her home from daycare and I was afraid to go out again, but that's it - so I guess I've been to eight, if my math is correct. Four or five of those were since we moved into our house and became part of this precinct. Most every time, it has been me, this nice old neighbor lady who volunteers for the local party, and sometimes a few more people. Lone Star Pa has gotten good about going in recent years, but I cannot remember ever attending a caucus here where there were more than 5 adults present...plus my kids. On Tuesday night, there were 150 or so people at our precinct. Possibly many more. It was pretty crowded.

The crowd there in the lobby of the local Catholic high school that was our polling place was the most obvious harbinger that a very different sort of night was in store for us, but there were other early signs. There were folks, from the two campaign offices, trying to organize people right away into separate caucuses (cauci?) for the two candidates. Lone Star Pa had decided to join me and sign in for Obama, even though he voted for Hillary in early voting (yes, you can do that) because her later negative campaigning troubled him (it didn't actually trouble me - I wish they wouldn't do it, but I think they all do). The nice neighbor lady was there with the precinct packets, as the temporary chair. I didn't know which candidate she supported but I wanted her to be permanent chair because I knew she knew all the rules and because I knew she had been faithfully serving the precinct year after year, when no one else cared. I was disturbed that people (people from our precinct to be sure, but still) from the campaigns kept telling her what to do, like the caucus was more about their campaign machines than our neighborhood. She told me early on, though, that she didn't want to be permanent chair, so I didn't really care who was, as long as they would handle the paperwork stuff for our precinct and run the meeting, which is what the job is about.

It took well over an hour for everyone to get signed in for their prospective candidates. I had packed lots of activities for the LSB, but had not anticipated being there more than half an hour (good thing we ate first), so I ended up having to do things like breastfeed and bribe her, also. That was fun.

After everyone signed in, the next order of business was to elect a chair and a secretary for the precinct caucus, who would then count all the votes, so they could determine how many Obama delegates and how many Clinton delegates there would be out of the 13 delegates that our precinct would send to the county convention (plus alternates). I didn't know anyone who wanted these positions, so I didn't care who got them - I had done this enough times to understand their administrative nature. Someone nominated someone and a bunch of people started to repeat her name. They were standing around a woman who had passed out a bunch of Obama stuff when we first came in, so I thought they meant her and raised my hand to vote in favor, since she seemed enthusiastic about helping.

At that time, the Lone Star Girl backed into a vase of philodendron and broke it. Grr. I became distracted with making her clean it up, apologize and promise restitution to a nun*, and with keeping people from slipping.

While I was dealing with this minor crisis, a woman with whom I had been chatting amiably earlier hissed that I was voting for a Clinton person. Apparently that name did not really go with who I thought it went with - but the person who it did go with was another enthusiastic young Democrat, so I found it hard to care - the job is not affected by who your candidate is - you serve the whole precinct. I said as much distractedly, indicating that I was kind of busy, and she said that the Obama caucus cared and she couldn't trust me anymore. Well. Very different indeed. In our tiny precinct meetings past, we had all worked together with none of that, there not having been enough people present to do otherwise. And was not I one of the Obama caucus? She obviously meant the campaign - but I was more into my precinct, and I had a vase to clean up.

Clinton supporters got elected chair and secretary which horrified a couple of Obama supporters, but, again, not me, because it really didn't matter. The Obama supporters had a lot of questions about the counting process (these were Hillary supporters, not Jeb Bush) and the secretary, who was kind of grumpy, wanted them to shut up so she could actually count without losing track. They sniped at each other quite a bit. I offered a short speech on the fact that the chair and the secretary represented our whole precinct, not just the Clinton supporters and that we were all in this together and would eventually need to work together anyway, and couldn't we be nice, please? No one paid any attention to me. The chair was pretty diplomatic, however, and she eventually got people moderately calm, with the help of a more experienced Obama campaign person who was coming to see how silly it was getting. The proportions of our precinct count came out so that 6 of our 13 delegates would be for Obama and 7 for Clinton, which was really an excellent showing for Obama since the county ended up being 66% Clinton, 33% Obama. By this time, most people had gone home.

We split up to choose our delegates to the county convention for each candidate and had to dig through the sign-in lists for people as, after a couple of hours there, we were back to the more familiar state of having more delegate slots to fill than people present. We found people, though. Before we got back together to look at resolutions, I tried to apologize to the woman who had hissed at me, explaining both that I had originally thought I was voting for an Obama supporter and that I knew that what really mattered was a work ethic, not candidate preference - but she disagreed and was still pissed at me.

After getting the delegates sorted out, it was time for the resolutions - my favorite part. My resolution was adopted by the precinct as well as two that I submitted from the teachers' union and a bunch of others. The LSG was all about people voting for my resolutions.

When it was time to elect a chair of our precinct's delegation to the county convention, an Obama campaign person suggested the chair person who had run our convention - the Clinton supporter that the other person had gotten upset about my accidentally voting for. I was glad to see a little teamwork.

We didn't leave until 10:30pm and had to get up in the morning for TAKS testing at work and school, so it was a pretty exhausting process.

I have always been a huge advocate of educating people about the caucus process, and have always been very frustrated that most people don't know that it even exists and that they need to participate. Now everyone knows. I found myself having a lot less fun at this well-attended caucus than I had always had at our tiny ones, though, because of all the conflict between people. Except that I really don't understand the territorial behavior of my species in many of its manifestations, however, this caucus was the way they really should be. It was messy and rough, but it was also democracy - people hashing it all out and deciding who would lead together - with no bloodshed.

I love democracy.


* She took the nun a new vase yesterday, despite the nun's protestations that it was fine.