#IACaucus2016: Caucusing at Precinct 57
Since I live on the right side of Sherman Hill, my caucus site was at the local electrical workers’ union hall, IBEW 347, adjacent to Smokey Row. I arrived at 6:30 p.m. and the line was all the way down the block. It was a cold 40 minute wait. The volunteers did a great job of making sure people in line were registered to vote at their respective addresses before they entered the building. Strangely, due to some unknown demographic sorcery, they were keen on getting persons with last names beginning with ‘O’ through ‘Z’ — these people were given priority to get into the caucus site on a much faster express line. Unfortunately, I was ineligible, so I had to wait with the couple of hundred other folks who were also ineligible.
Once inside, I signed in and received a green index card with my number on it: 248. I sauntered in looking around and was confused; the caucus had not begun yet, so folks were pretty much mixed in with each other. I had expected it to be divided from the beginning, but it was nice to see some pre-caucus harmony. I found my friend Luke, a hardcore Bernie supporter, and Britt, the Bernie precinct captain. We laughed about how full the hall was and we were thrown off by the fact that our site was so small. In the end, 325 people were allowed in. John McCormally was unanimously elected as permanent caucus chair and he nominated and the room unanimously elected his choice for secretary.
He brought the caucus to order and, after a few minutes of finagling, each side discovered a unique way to count caucus goers. We split the room: one side for Bernie, the other for Hillary; O’Malley supporters had to caucus in the cafeteria in a separate room. I placed 9 chairs in front of our group and had everyone form up in lines in front of each chair. Luke stood on each chair and had each row of people lift their numbered cards so he could count them one by one while Britt went through the crowd for a second count in the old fashioned way. We counted 188 Bernie caucusers.
In the middle of our first count, a woman in a red coat who was with O’Malley confronted our group and made a speech about keeping the governor viable: they had 24 and needed 25 more for a total of 49 caucusers to keep O’Malley at 15% at this precinct. I didn’t hear her whole speech, but the end didn’t seem to taper off well as I heard grumblings and people turning their backs on her and she soon vanished. When I spoke to those who were nearest, one said it was the worst speech he had ever heard in his entire history of caucusing. Apparently, the beginning of her spiel was good until she was asked what would happen if nobody defected. At that point, she implied or subtly threatened that they would go to Hillary. Luke, Britt and I huddled and did some quick math. If we had 188 people, we could only send 3 out of 6 total delegates to the county convention for Bernie; Hillary would get the rest if O’Malley’s team failed to reach viability. We only needed 8 more bodies in Bernie’s camp to reach 4 delegates. Luke went to O’Malley’s camp to negotiate the situation. Many of the O’Malley caucusers strongly indicated that they would come to Bernie if they were not viable, but not before. So far, we felt good about the way things were going.
A few minutes later, Luke crossed over to Hillary’s camp in a gesture of good will and we told them our count and they gave us theirs. They had 113. We had briefly considered whether or not it was worth negotiating some sort of agreement between the three camps to keep O’Malley viable; maybe we could go halfsies on the number they needed, but as it stood, it seemed our Bernie crowd would get the most delegates regardless of the outcome and only we stood to lose as the Hillary crowd could easily give O’Malley the bodies they needed and still hold on to two of the assigned 6 delegates. The caucus chair called for a 30 minute realignment period which gave the O’Malley-ers a chance to siphon some supporters from either Bernie or Hillary in a last hail mary. A representative from each camp was given two minutes to rally and give a speech to the room about their candidate of choice. After the speeches and about 15 minutes of discussion and much jumping up and down, Hillary’s crowd had dwindled down to 87 and O’Malley’s camp swelled to 50! The Bernie team stayed strong at 188 all night.
Luke, Britt and I looked at each other in surprise: no one had seen that coming. We all anticipated that the O’Malley crowd would be allowed to fold and that we would have to fight our hardest to get at least 8 of the stragglers to come to Bernie’s side, but in the end, it seemed that Team Hillary made the bold move of keeping O’Malley’s team viable in order to keep Bernie from gaining one more delegate. So, the distribution ended this way: Bernie received 3 delegates, Hillary received 2 delegates, and O’Malley received 1 delegate. At that point, we had to elect who those delegates and alternates would be. I stepped up and volunteered as I wanted to continue my experience with this election cycle and see it through. After some deliberation, we were able to select the 3 delegates and 2 alternates. I was placed on a platform committee.
The caucus chair held a quick vote on some resolutions to be submitted and then adjourned us. By the time I got home, two minutes away, Governor O’Malley had suspended his campaign.
As you probably already know by now, the 2016 Democratic Iowa Caucus was the closest in history. To the dismay of many, some of these precincts were so close, they had to be decided by coin tosses. But that’s how it is in the Iowa caucus. When it’s this close, in my view, both Hillary and Bernie are arguably winners — but I’ll let other pundits analyze and muse on what this means for the rest of the primaries. The Polk County Convention is on March 12th and there are committee meetings between now and then: I look forward to attending them.
