Last week, while driving from The Minny to L-Town I stopped in Ames for the night to visit the General and 'Lissa. At the time, they were talking about how excited they were getting regarding the upcoming caucus. As they explained the caucus to me, I found myself becoming more and more intrigued by the whole thing as well. By the time they finished describing it to me, I had but one question, "can I watch?"
And so it was that Corn and I drove up to Ames yesterday to witness the Democratic Caucus for Ames- Ward 3, Precinct 4 which was held at Ames Middle School.
Corn spent the morning DJing at KJHK, he was hosting the MLK Special from 8a-Noon. By the time he was packed and ready to go it was already a bit past 1p, so we skipped lunch and hit the road. As we drove on up I-35 it occurred to us that we had no idea what it was that we were getting ourselves into. We'd heard about the Iowa Caucus every four years for as long as we could remember but we didn't really know what went on at a caucus. I guess that's why we went, we wanted to find out what the hell this thing was all about.
At some point in Missouri, while discussing this Corn turned to me and said, "Man, we're driving four hours to see the Iowa Caucus, we're total American studies geeks." As the miles clicked by, I had to agree with him.
We stopped at a Wendy's in Bethany, MO for lunch. The TV in the combination Kum N Go/Wendy's had that new Ryan Seacrest daytime talk show. Wow, it's like they merged the Rosie O'Donnell Show with TRL, then they sprinkled a bit of oldskool Letterman in. Thankfully, the show isn't as addictive as that makes it sound because it's really just a long commercial for American Idol.
We hit Ames a little before 6p, found the caucus site and left to put gas in Arturo so he wouldn't freeze to death during the caucus. I don't know exactly how cold it was in Ames last night but it had to be in the single digits with wind. We toured the middle school and looked for the General. He hadn't arrived yet, but since he was precinct captain for the Kucinich campaign we figured that he was still receiving last minute instructions back at HQ, orsomething.
Corn and I hung out inside the front door, waiting. Apparently, the man with the locks and the the short Latino with product in his hair must have looked official, because people kept coming up to us and asking questions. Corn and I couldn't figure out why these people kept asking us where stuff was (Maybe it was our really nice sweaters.) but we smiled and shrugged politely every time. "We're from Kansas," we'd explain every time.
As we stood there, waiting we discussed bringing in the cameras (video and still) we'd brought up to document our trip. Try as we might, we just couldn't bring ourselves to actually photograph the caucus. We didn't know what was going to happen and really, we wanted to experience the caucus itself, not be worried about getting a shot. In retrospect, I kinda wish we'd taken some pics of the night- but I'm glad we didn't.
Eventually, the General and 'Lissa showed up. The General tweaking his traditional jeans and a plaid shirt ensemble with a nice sweater and 'Lissa was rocking her "Kucinich for President" T-Shirt. We did the introductions and headed to the Auditorium where the W4P3 caucus was to be held.
Outside the Auditorium were a few different signs with instructions for the caucus attendees to follow. They were all pretty standard, save for my favorite. It read:
"Only one campaign sign allowed per caucus. However, there is no limit on the number of buttons that may be brought into the caucus. (Plus they're fun.)"
Yup, this was going to be an interesting evening.
We told the women checking the rolls at the door that we weren't there to vote, we were just observers. She smiled and welcomed us to Iowa and told us to walk on in and make ourselves comfortable. Registered voters were given a sticker to wear on their shirt and voters were left to police themselves as to keeping observers from voting. The only thing that would have kept Corn or myself from lying about our voting status was our conscience and the good people of the precinct turning us in if we did lie and try to vote.
That was the first thing I fell in love with last night- the honesty. They trusted us not to lie, they trusted the citizenry to not assist us in lying. Call me a romantic, but there's something to be said for the beauty of something as simple as trust and faith. As the night wore on, I would have my faith in democracy bolstered a few more times.
This leads to the second thing I loved. Precinct captains, and their lieutenants, spent this time before things really got going watching the doors. Whenever someone without a button on their shirt walked in they'd go up to them and either offer them one of their candidate's buttons or they'd ask them if they'd picked a candidate yet. Regardless of the individual's answer the precinct captain would regale the buttonless person with the relative merits of their candidate. Corn and I were spared this for one of two reasons: 1) we were sitting next to and conversing with the Kucinich precinct captain or 2) we weren't wearing the requisite white sticker that designated us as voters.
Number three on the things I loved list was the following line from Corn. "Yup, we drove to Iowa to see a caucus, and now we're sitting in the front row. We've moved beyond geeks now. We're totally hardcore AMS."
As the registered voters signed in and made themselves comfortable, the woman who would later be voted chair of our caucus read letters of support from the Governor of Iowa, the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, Democratic State Senators and Sen. Harkin thanking everyone for coming out to participate in the caucus. As this happened, letters from each of the candidates to the caucus participants were passed out (one copy of each letter for all to share). The letters from the candidates were pretty straightforward final attempts to sway voters into their camps.
Eventually, everyone was signed in and the caucus was ready to begin. First order of business- electing someone to be in charge. The procedure (as would be followed every time someone would be elected to DO something all night) was to call for voice nominations, a second and then an oral vote. The caucus unanimously elected a chair and a secretary and it was time to move on.
Second order of business was to count heads. Everyone with a white sticker on was to stand up and count off. It was like gym class, only different. One, two, three, four. . .and on the counting went until at the very back of the auditorium we heard a faint "one forty two." 142 people in this caucus, Madame Chair smiled from the stage and remarked that this was definitely the largest turnout she could remember for quite some time.
Then comes the math. In order for a candidate to stay on the caucus's ballot, they need to have 15% of the voters in the caucus supporting them. So, 142 x 0.15 = 21.3, rounded up is 22. In order to be a viable candidate, according to the rules of the caucus, 22 people must vote for said candidate. That said to the group, the chair released the hounds and people started walking over to their groups. Each candidate's precinct captain held up their big campaign sign and walked over to a corner of the room. Slowly, people walked over to the sign for the candidate they wanted to vote for.
Undecided people walked around and talked to members of the different candidate groups for a while and members of the different groups searched the room for stragglers and undecideds. Once the groups were relatively settled the chair gave each candidate group one minute to tell the rest of the caucus why they were voting for their candidate. Normally this job fell to a precinct captain which caused a problem for the Gephardt and Clark groups as they had no precinct captains. This led to one of the funnier moments of the evening. The Gephardt group, (comprised of people over 50 and one lone ISU student.) fumbled around and looked for one amongst them who could speak eloquently about their candidate. When someone was forced to speak she said only, "my ex mother in law called me from Dallas, Texas last night to tell me that she's known Dick Gephardt for 20 years and he's a good man and that I should vote for him. So I am."
The chair looked at her watch and said, "well, you still have some time left in your minute, anyone else wish to speak?" No one said anything until the minute was almost up. Finally one woman blurted out.
"Well, I don't really care who wins tonight so long as it's someone who can put this cowboy back on his horse and tell him to ride out of town."
This elicited the largest applause of the night.
Not to be outdone, however and as if on cue, the Kerry captain started her minute by saying "And John Kerry's the man to do it."
However, the funniest moment of the night came when a woman in the Clark group spoke up to say, "I'm voting for Gen. Clark because I feel he's the most electable of the democratic candidates. . ." Funny thing was, she was the only one in the precinct voting for Clark. Yes, I know he didn't campaign in Iowa, but it's still funny dammit.
After all the speeches, the caucus was given a few more minutes to move around some more before Madame Chair stopped the proverbial music and ordered the precinct captains to count off the number of people in their groups. The captains counted off and when they were done, shouted their numbers across the room to the secretary who wrote them up on a chalkboard on stage. In the end, the following candidates were no longer viable.
Sharpton- 0 Votes
Lieberman- 0 Votes
Clark- 1 Vote
Gephardt- 8 Votes
Undecided- 8 Votes
Kucinich- 11 Votes
With that the chair put more time on the clock for the folks whose candidates were no longer viable to pick new candidates. This is where things got really interesting. Immediately, members of the viable camps descended upon the votes that were up for grabs. This period saw some heated discussion and I hear in past years and in other precincts this is where the baked good bribes come into play. Sadly, there were no baked goods to be had at our caucus.
Cool thing number 5: Every time someone joined a new candidate group in this round, that group would let out a round of applause and whoops and general loudness. It was really, really cool- it was nice to see people enthusiastic about democracy.
People started leaving at this point as well. If they didn't like any of the remaining candidates, or they saw that their candidate didn't really need their support, folks would take off. This, of course, changed the numbers of attendees there and caused someone to ask about the rules of the caucus.
The number of votes needed to be deemed viable is based on the number of people in attendance when the caucus begins. This number may not rise after the proceedings have been started. This number may shrink however and it does not effect the number of votes needed to be viable. It does, however change the mathematics for distributing delegates to the County Democratic Convention. More on that later.
The much lauded 11th hour deal between Kucinich and Edwards didn't do much in this caucus. Apparently, the deal was so 11th hour that the precinct captains weren't notified of it. The only reason the General was aware of such a deal was because he'd bothered to read CNN.com before leaving his office. Once the 10 other voters in our caucus were informed of the deal via the printout the General brought there was a big debate amongst the Kucinich camp. In the end, a third or so of the Kucinich voters left, and the rest were pretty evenly distributed amongst Kerry, Dean and Edwards.
Last night in Ames, Iowa's 3rd Precinct of the 4th Ward 57 people voted for John Kerry to receive the Democratic nomination for president. 39 people voted for both Howard Dean and John Edwards. Yup, a tie for second, with only 135 people of the original 142 voting in the second (and final) round.
Now that the official vote was in, it was time to divvy up the delegates to the county convention. Here's the math for that.
(Number of Votes X Number of Total Caucus Delgates)/Number of Final Round Voters
For Kerry it looked like this (57 x 10)/135 = 4.3
For Dean and Edwards. . . (39 x 10)/135 = 2.9
In whole numbers, 4 delegates for Kerry and 3 each for Dean and Edwards would come from this particular precinct. Each group held a quick election of delegates and once that was done, the main thrust of the evening was over. 10 people had been voted to represent this precinct at the county convention. Once there, they'd vote for people to go to the state convention and then on to the national convention.
At this point, all but 11 eligible voters took off, even the reporter from the University of Chicago Maroon took off. But before they did, some guy from over in the Dean corner in the room started loudly lecturing people about the importance of voting for Democrats to every position from "dogcatcher to president. Because the Republicans just want to keep taking the money out of your pocket."
It was at this point that Corn turned to me and said "but the Democrats'll do the same, too."
My reply, "true, but think of it this way. It's the difference between a stripper and a hooker. The Republicans will take your $50 and give you one helluva lap dance. The Democrats, on the other hand will take your $50 and give you more, service. I don't know about you but that blowjob will do me more good than that lap dance will."
See, there are differences between the two parties.
The next 30+ minutes was devoted to hashing out things like the platform and voting people into the party's central committee. General Belgrano proposed 8 platform planks and had 6 unanimously accepted by the remaining attendees. Then, to top the night off the General was unanimously voted into the Central Committee of the County Democratic Party. May I be the first to congratulate him and hope that his reign will be a fair and just one.
After it was all said and done the four of us went out for drinks with friends of the Belgranos. We sat in the bar, ate BBQ Wings and watched the returns come in on the TVs over the bar. We watched as Dean soundlessly shouted and hooted and hollered, and we demanded that the sound be turned on when Gephardt withdrew from the race. We weren't surprised, actually. After the showing we'd seen in the auditorium, we figured that Gephardt would get the message and go home. He did.
I raised a glass to Rep. Gephardt and answered my phone. Cody was in Cedar Rapids and had just attended his first caucus as well. Apparently he'd had just as interesting a evening as Corn and I had, but with a lot more overt drama. Something about a low viability threshold, only 2 delegates coming from his precinct, a high delegate threshold and a lot of fighting over voters so that candidates could get those delegates.
He explained what Dean had soundlessly shouted at us a few minutes earlier and a good time was had by all.
So that's the story. Reaction coming next. . .
