My First Caucus Day
20 hours of nerdy excitement, anxiety, stress, and absolute joy told through Snapchat, Twitter, and commentary.
My day began at 3:30am. Sounds excessive, I know. I can almost hear you: “Slow down Stace, the caucus doesn’t start until 7.” But I had to be at the TODAY Show by 4:30 to start filming at 6am.
Got this snazzy today show mug. And then soon found out:
I really didn’t know what to do. Then I realized:
(And now it’s 10:30 and it’s 19 hours…)
So anyway I was trying to keep calm about Gov. Palin. Started looking around the room, the way they decorated the coffee shop/store.
They even had Sarah Pratt sculpt a small butter cow! So cute. As the show started, I realized that basically whenever Al Roker was on camera, so was I. Here I am in a TODAY Show tweet:
Then a Roker tweet:
My favorite was the moment I realized how many famous people I was seeing at one time:
Looking over to see Matt and Tom chatting away:
I only got a little tiny bit miffed:
But it all turned out ok: (Crucial pic with Gov. Palin)
8:20am: Coming off of having a wonderful couple of hours, knowing I had to get to class soon, I went outside to find…
Drove to school, had class at 9:10 (gave a shameless caucus plug) and 10:20 (Prof asked about the TODAY Show).
Drove back to DSM around 11:30 to work the phones at the Republican Party of Iowa until 4. Time went really fast because I literally didn’t put the phone down the whole time. So many people were calling in asking about their caucus locations, whether they needed to reregister, asking if they could bring their children. I loved answering them, as nerdy and lame as it sounds.
At 4, I drove back to Indianola (Simpson) to drop off voter registration forms that we had students fill out, but were not in early enough to make the Secretary of State’s list. Dropped off those forms at 3 different caucus locations.
Grabbed a quick dinner and drove back to Des Moines, headed finally to my own caucus location.
I had been worried for weeks that I would report my two assigned precincts wrong and mess up the entire caucus. I literally had nightmares about being late and not being able to participate. Having CNN come to my apartment because I messed everything up.
So as we got settled and voted, I slowly went through the process of reporting my precinct and the other precinct in my area that was in the same building. I didn’t even mess up.
It’s been an exhausting, amazing day. My first caucus was a complete success and I am so happy to be fortunate enough to participate. These last few months have really solidified why I love Iowa so much, as well as falling in love even more deeply with politics. I’ve loved the entire experience.
